Chapter Text
A few hours after the explosion at the Conclave, Divine Justinia walks out of the Fade. She’s holding hands with a little child who seems torn between staring at her free hand in fascination and yelling at the “meanies” behind them. The tear closes as their feet touch upon the scorched stone. Both collapse at once, just barely caught by the fast reflexes of the soldiers and scouts present.
It’s not what anyone expected, but it’s far better than the alternative.
Justinia wakes with her Left and Right Hands at her bedside. The child is sleeping on a cot nearby, tended to by an herbalist and an elven apostate. Justinia firmly sends them away after taking the child into her own arms. The story she relays to her Hands and only her Hands is… troubling. Troubling and impossible.
Corrupted Grey Wardens, blighted men turned monster, and a little child who’d stepped quite literally from thin air to save her from a terrible fate. The child is innocent of course, strange abilities notwithstanding. She touched an orb the “Elder One” had carried and branded herself with its power. That malignant power was, according to the child’s own semi-incomprehensible words, “tangly strings trying to eat me a little bit!”
Leliana departs to begin arranging things—they must prepare a plan for the Gray Wardens, among many other tasks—but Cassandra stays. The herbalist and apostate return. The unnamed child frowns and whimpers in her sleep as the magic in her hand flares. The apostate tells Justinia what he knows, apologizes for not being able to do more to stabilize it. When Justinia asks what he makes of the child herself, his expression turns strange.
“I… am not sure.”
“Is she a mage?” Justinia asks; a test.
Solas, the apostate, looks at the child for a long time before he answers. “She must be,” he says, “but I have never met a mage like her. The connection she has to the Fade is… strange. I’m uncertain how much of that is because of her mark.”
“I see,” says Justinia. “Thank you for your help. Please, keep trying. This little one saved my life. I would ask no less for her.”
The child wakes not long after, and far earlier than anyone expected. She squirms and stretches, yawning. Her eyes pop open. They are bright, metallic gold. She looks at the adults with open curiosity, not at all alarmed, and smiles.
“Hi!” she says.
“You are of Nevarra?” Cassandra asks, surprised.
“Nevarra? She greeted us in Orlesian,” says Justina.
Solas says nothing, but his expression of surprise turns to confusion and consideration.
“I heard Nevarran,” Cassandra says, confused as well.
The little girl laughs. “Everyone can understand me! It’s magic!”
“Is that so?” Justinia says thoughtfully. “What kind of magic?”
“Oh, I dunno,” says the girl, staring in fascination at her marked hand. “Papa tried to guess once but he said everything in one really long breath and got distracted and then ran off to the archives, so I didn’t get it. Wowee, that’s so tangled!”
“Your papa? Was he with you at the Conclave?” Cassandra asks.
The girl pauses, head tilting. “What’s a conclave?”
“A meeting. Did your father bring you to the meeting between the Templars and the mages?”
Her face lights up. “Mage? I’m a mage! What’s a Templar, though?”
Cassandra’s jaw works for a moment, baffled as she tries to figure out what to make of the girl’s statements.
“What is your name, child?” Justinia asks thoughtfully.
“Lora! I have a big long name but you can call me Lora because I like you.”
“A big long name?” Solas asks.
“Yes.” She nods. “Very long. I had to memorize the whooooole thing to introduce myself when important people come visit, but I like Lora better. Oh yeah, what happened to the big icky dark demon man? He was gross, and there was gross dark stuff in the people helping him too. I wanted to explode him but the big shiny magic ball really hurt when I touched it. I think that’s what made my hand all shiny and tangly. It’s trying to eat me, but only a little bit.” The mark flares. She scowls at it. “No! Bad magic, don’t eat me!”
Divine Justinia seems content to ignore most of that. “How did you come to the temple, Lora? Where you found me?”
“I was ‘splorin,” says Lora. “So, accident. Kind of. I like places with lots of magic. Granda says they prob’ly drag me in when I’m ‘splorin, like a magnet!”
“Where did you come from, then? Nevarra? Or perhaps… across the sea?”
Lora giggles madly, hands over her mouth, and looks at the Divine with sparkling eyes. “No, silly, that’s too close! I came from really really really far away. A whole other world!”
A profound silence falls in the room as the adults stare at her. Lora seems wholly unbothered, focusing again on the mark. Solas notes that he was not seeing things earlier—her eyes do indeed begin to glow a bright gold.
“…the child is mad,” says Cassandra, but doesn’t mean it. She speaks like she can find nothing else to say.
“I have seen many things in the Fade over the course of my travels,” Solas says, “but I have never seen anything quite like… Well, do you mean the Fade when you speak of another world, miss Lora?”
She giggles again. “You called me miss!” Her head tilts, but she still looks only at her hand. “What’s the Fade?”
“We walked there together, child,” says Justina. “Do you remember? We were chased by spiders.”
Only now does Lora devote her full attention to them again, and the glow in her eyes fades to nothing. “The murky magic place? Those weren’t spiders, they were spirits and they made themselves look like bad science men.”
“I don’t think she comes from the Fade, Solas,” says Cassandra dryly.
“Indeed not.”
The strange girl seems to find nothing but amusement in their efforts to figure out what was happening, as if she’s seen it many times before. She laughs, open-mouthed and delighted. “No! Another world! I’ll show you, watch!”
What follows is like a clap of thunder contained within the room. A faint scream echoes back to them, shrill and surprised more than frightened. Lora is gone, but they’ve barely sprung to their feet before she suddenly returns and falls to the side, clutching her hand. The mark hisses and crackles menacingly.
“Ow! OWWIE!” She rolls around on the furs, whimpering.
“Lora!” Justinia gasps, reaching for her. “Child!”
“It’s too tangled! It won’t let me leave!” Curled up in a ball, the girl opens her teary eyes enough to glare at her hand, as if it was hardly more than a naughty playmate. “And it hurt!”
“What do you mean it won’t let you leave? Where did you try to go?” Cassandra demands.
“I’m s’pposed to leave whenever I want! That’s an important rule in case someone is mean and tries to hurt me!” Lora pushes herself upright with a little help from Justinia. She shakes her marked hand out. “But it’s all tangly with the strings here, so when I tried to leave and maybe go find Grama Oth so she could tell you about other words, it pulled me back! Really hard!” She points out the window. “It spat me out up there where all the strings are tangled and broken and full of stuff, and then I came back here because I was falling.”
“Do you mean,” says Solas, “that you attempted to leave this world… and fell from the Breach because the mark would not allow you to depart?”
“Yes,” says Lora, distress already mostly forgotten. She purses her lips. “I guess I can’t go home until I figure out how to untangle this.” She lights up and grins at them. The resilience of a small child is truly a thing to behold. “Hooray! No lessons for a long time and Granda can’t scold me for missing them ‘cuz I can’t leave!”
“You cannot go home and you are happy about it?” Cassandra says with disbelief. “Will you not miss your family?”
“Granda will come find me,” the little girl asserts with absolute confidence. “So I won’t have to miss them. But now I won’t have to do aaaany geometry! Or etiquette! Or philosophy!” She squirms excitedly in place at the prospect.
“We will have to be attentive for his arrival, then,” says Justinia. The prospect that any grandparent or parent with similar abilities might arrive in wrath over their child being trapped goes unsaid, but certainly not unnoticed.
“Grama Oth might come first, I dunno. Or Auntie Venn. Or maybe mama or papa. There’s lots of people who try to make me go to my lessons.” Her interest in the topic ends abruptly, and she hops down from the bed to zoom over to the window. “Why is there a big tear up in the sky? It felt weird to got close to. I want to do that again, maybe I can fix it because it felt a lot like the thing on my hand trying to eat me. I can fix anything! Eventually!”
“That is not safe, child,” says Justinia. “Come sit with us again. We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I am Divine Justinia. Oh, you would not know—Divine is the highest rank in the Chantry.”
She at least succeeds in getting Lora’s attention for the moment. “Is that like a High Priestess?” she asks curiously.
“I suppose. Your world must not have Andraste. Who or what do your people worship?”
“Ooooh, worship.” She nods sagely and trots back over so she’s at least in polite conversation distance. “We have the Thirteen, the Virtues. One day I’ll be the representative of aaaaaall of them, but that’s Granda’s job right now. Mama is sworn to Honor and papa and sworn to Curiosity and Granda was sworn to Wisdom but now he’s all of them and they want me to swear to Wisdom when I grow up but I dunno, I don’t think I’m very wise. And also Wisdom is boooooooring.” She puts a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. “Oh but don’t tell anyone I said that. Especially not High Priestess Sophia.”
No one has much of a chance to comment on her rambling, because at the same instant Leliana knocks on the door briefly before entering. She pauses when she sees Lora standing in the middle of the room, awake and seemingly healthy.
“Hello, little one,” she says, then turns her attention to Justinia. “Most Holy, the situation is only getting worse. We need to close these rifts soon or we will be overrun by demons.”
“That will be difficult,” says Justinia, watching Lora curiously circle Leliana. She seems to like the Nightingale's purple cowl very much. “Our best chance at doing so is… well. We cannot put a child in danger.”
Lora’s ears prick like a puppy at a whistle for dinner. “Danger?” she asks eagerly, pausing in her exploration of Leliana’s armored tunic. “You can put me in danger, I love danger! And everyone says I’m allowed to make things that try to hurt me ‘splode! Oh, oh oh, and—and—” She becomes so excited that speech eludes her for a moment and she prances in place. “Ahem. Ahem!” She composes herself in a mimicry of adult mannerisms, folding her hands in front of her chest. “And I am definitely allowed to have knives,” she lies solemnly.
“Really,” Cassandra drawls.
“Yeah!”
Justinia shakes her head, amused. “Lora, it is not good to lie.”
Lora pouts at her. “Well I should be allowed to have a knife.”
Solas glances between the humans. “I apologize, but… we may have no choice. And she has already exhibited frankly impossible talents. She may be the safest out of all of us, even surrounded by demons.”
Leliana’s eyes sharpen.
“Course I’m the safest,” Lora boasts, “I can go anywhere I want! And I’m a mage and that means I can do anything! Eventually. But I can definitely make bad icky guys ‘splode. Especially bad science men. And I can turn into a dragon whenever I want, because dragons are the best.”
Her final statement, delivered as boastfully as the others, throws the whole room. “You can do what?” Leliana asks.
“I can be a dragon, watch!” She vanishes. In her place, a cat-sized dragon like nothing any of them have ever seen appears. Four-winged and svelte, skin the color of white opal with gold veins, it squeaks and chitters and darts up Leliana’s leg to perch on her shoulder.
“See!” says the dragon in Lora’s voice.
The wordless staring continues for a good, solid minute.
“Perhaps,” Justinia says at length, “you are right. And perhaps we have no choice.”
“Are you certain the mark can seal these rifts?” Leliana asks, curiously raising a hand out and letting the little dragon-girl hold onto her finger.
“I am certain of nothing, except that the only hope we have is the mark. I will personally protect her in the attempt, if you will permit.”
“A generous offer from an apostate,” says Cassandra, laden with suspicion.
“I suffer just as much as any of you from this,” he says coolly in response. “Beyond that, she is an innocent child, and I am one of the few experts who might be able to help. Think of apostates what you will, but I am not the kind of monster who would abandon a child to this task.”
“You were brave to even offer your help,” says Justinia. “Certainly I will accept. I would accompany her myself if I could, but I suspect she is far better suited to fending off demons than I. Cassandra, gather those you can and escort Lora to the nearest rift. If the mark cannot close it, then retreat.”
“Yes, Most Holy,” says Cassandra.
“Are you going out with me? Yaaay!” Lora cheers.
Leliana already seems to be in love with the tiny dragon, having coaxed her into a cradled position. “It will be better to return to your human form,” she says, smiling. “Many people would be alarmed by this, Lora.”
“Oh.” The dragon nods sagely. “Yes. Granda says I can’t be Opal at home—I’m Opal when I’m a dragon—‘cuz it’ll cause a heresy. And that’s bad.”
Abruptly, Leliana is holding a human child again. She sets her down easily.
“I am sure we can have many fascinating conversations later,” says Justinia, standing. “Thank you for saving my life, little one. I would apologize for sending you into danger, but something tells me you charge in headlong all on your own.”
“Yeah!” the small child enthusiastically agrees, evidently seeing no problem with such behavior.
Justinia chuckles. “I will be in the Chantry, praying for your success and organizing the survivors. Maker be with you all.” She departs.
“Okay, let’s go!” says Lora. She turns to charge out the door, only stopped by Leliana’s quick intervention. “Oh, right. Where are we going?”
“Maker,” Cassandra mutters, rubbing a hand across her forehead. “Lora, stay close to Solas. You can use magic to, ah, ‘explode’ demons, yes?”
“I can do lots of stuff! Fire and ice and splosions and sometimes I turn bad guys into pretty flowers because it’s funny and sometimes I explode, but that’s only when the bad science man trap me.” She makes demonstrative arm motions to accompany each description.
“I will guard and guide her, Seeker,” Solas says with wholly unwarranted confidence. “Come, da’len.”
“Okay!” She glances down. “Wowee, do you hate shoes too? Everyone always tells me to put my shoes back on but you’re grown up and you’re not wearing shoes! You’re my favorite now.” Immediately, she begins to remove her odd-looking boots.
“Please do not,” says Solas, audibly regretting his life choices.
“Pick up reinforcements as you go,” says Leliana, watching the chaos with muted amusement. “I will scout ahead and secure your path.”
“Maker go with you,” says Cassandra.
Leliana laughs. “I think you will need the Maker’s hand more than I.”
Lora's Dragon Form
