Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You remember that night like it was yesterday. There was a thunderstorm, it was close enough that it roared in your ears despite the walls of your home all around you.

Your siblings, all older, moved out ages ago and started their own. Parents had to work later then normal. 

It was just you.

You, the storm and yourself. Lovely.

Even with such a night you never expected this. 

—————

You watch the sun from atop the ridge, metres from the ground and the cliff face you grew to call home. 

It's peaceful.

—————

You remember meeting her. Floating in the air, a golden star in dark water. She called herself Hope, more rather that was simply what she was.

Hope had honestly scared you witless. Then again a spirit crawling it's was through a fractured hole in reality will leave a lasting effect on anyone.

Thank god no one knows 15 year old you could scream like a little girl. 

Often the safest a person feels is when they're in their room. They live there, the sleep there and they certainly do not enjoy having any form of world shattering crisis there, be it emotionally or magically situated.

You had originally jumped back and rolled under your bed when faced with the exploding glowy mass that was forming in the air, annoyingly, in front of your door. You also sleep on the second floor of a rather tall house. Fuck. 

You had considered the closet but the cliche idea was shot down by its rather cluttered state. Big no there.

You really didn't want to die.

It's probably odd that when Hell comes to earth the first thing you think of is how pretty all the lights are. Lights that form a shape. 

A womany shape.

Hope, was hard to describe. The air seemed to burn around her. It was obvious that she was not something of this world, dimensional hole ripping aside. 

She didn’t talk as such as she made thoughts directly into your mind. Images, feeling, and all in between. It almost hurt. So much information and feeling running through your head, everything-

Burning.

She and the rest of her kind, watching their world burn as one man hoped to bring back what was lost. 

You’d cried. Your not sure they were ever your tears and if they were they were drowned in many others. Hot and thick, unending down your face.

“Help us”

It was all she had said at the time. All she needed to say. You’d seen everything else, had it burned into the back of your retina.

She offered her hand, and you took it.

You made a choice.

Your world burned green.

———————

You look down at the settlement built into the cliff, Avvar like ants below. How long has it been since then? Years? Decades? Time was a strange thing, always too much yet never enough. 

Hope burned beneath your skin.

———————

Your first experience of what was/soon/is a dead world was fire. Fire in your skin, in the air, everywhere. It danced along your spine, unrelenting as it tingled in your nerves. 

You weren’t scared though, you never had been since you came. You simply were.

You were a being born in a place where magic had shrivelled, deadened by mind, belief and more. The age of technology advancement had brought many a wonder, just as it took it.

Traces left behind, forgotten and laughed at still lingered, faded. Now no more then card tricks and pretty crystals.

But not here, here it clung. In Thedas it stayed. Dampened, but there. You could taste it. Ozone, orchids, like rock candy popping on your tongue. 

You look up, stand, Hope points to a cliff, you walk.

———————

You make your way down. Change is in the air, spirits whisper in your ear, time to go, time to do, time to be.

The time is nye. 

Chapter Text

You'd been here a long time, living, learning, surviving. Finding the lost trails and seeing everything there was. Hope, light, bright, burning, right under your skin, teaching you it all.

The Avvar called you The Walker. It was what you were. You walked through the world and into another. "Touched by the sky", blessed by their Lady.

You nor Hope commented, they could have their faith. You simply had to wait.

Apprenticed under the Augur you learnt just as much as you did from Hope. You learned people. The how's and why's. You struggled at times.

You lived with a young hunter and her family. She was like a sister, red tempered as her hair and just as fierce. You liked spending time with them.

It was simple to wait, even for what you later learned was 10 years. The hard bits were fighting off bandits, slavers, the blight, The Jaws of Hakkon and though your embarrassed to admit, marriage proposals.

Hope had laughed at the last one. Every single time.

So it wasn't much of a surprise when the sky tore itself in two and the spirit around the Hold screamed.

—————

Storvaker had long ago taken a liking to you and sat beside you as the ground shook, rumbling and roaring, trees and pebbles shook as all turned to the sky only to see in the far distance as pale blue turned acidic green.

Static flicked under your skin, be it Hope or your magic reacting to the situation you weren't sure.

Turning and racing off, Storvaker huffing before following after you, you move from your seated position over looking the main area often Hold and down the path ways to were the current Thane sat. Svarah Sun-Hair. It would be best to warn her against nearing any rifts. Not that she really needed to be warned, but she did like detailed explanations of why something was happening. You found her with the Augur by her thrown.

Svarah was good person and a good leader, calmer then the other holds, she tended to watch rather then charge. Fools were those who had mistaken her for weak. You had seen many an aftermath. Helped too.

Avvar don't generally have much patience for fools, or bandits.

Sometimes it was easier to leave unwelcome guests to the wrath of the basin.

So many spiders.

Pushing away your musing as Hope prodded you towards Svarah's watchful gaze as she watched you and the following hold beast enter.

She quirked her lips as she thought before opening them to speak.

Not for the first time you wondered if the Thane is Stone Bear Hold wasn't secretly a large cat. Something about the eyes, it always made you pause.

This was going to be fun-

Not.

Storvaker nudged at your side. Heh, emotional support bear.

Time to get this show on the road.

Hope started humming in agreement, it made your teeth tingle.

You later found your self wondering;

Who was going to be "The Herald of Andraste"?

Hope hopped for an elf.

You just wanted someone who isn't a complete arse.