Author's note: Welcome to the first installment of Sanguinarius Sanctus, a series of fanfics based in the Dragon Age universe which explores the power of blood. Tainted is a walkthrough of Dragon Age: Origins with a few twists and turns either not possible or not common in the game. Trigger warning: there are several oblique references to non-consensual sex peppered throughout this story. As well, most chapters should be comfortably rated Teen+, but a few will have explicit violence or suggested sex; these will have warnings in their own notes at the top. Thanks for reading, and please review!

"Do you want to talk about it?" To his credit, Duncan seemed as uncomfortable as Athadra did. When she offered no response beyond a shrug, he turned his gaze back over the water. The rest of the recruiting party was a half-day's rowing ahead of them, for which she was grateful. She didn't feel like being around too many men at the moment. Rowing still hurt, but it was a dull ache deep between her legs, rather than the sharp clawing at her abdomen the first hour on the lake had seen. She was no Spirit Healer, but she'd paid attention to her lessons.

They were rowing a small boat across the vastness of Lake Calenhad from the tower of the Circle of Magi to Redcliffe, and the silence seemed to suit the Grey Warden as well as it suited her for the rest of the day. They rowed together for hours, with no sound but water slapping wood; he never seemed to tire, though she caught a few beads of sweat trickling down his neck near dusk. His armour weighed down the small boat's prow, and beside her newly-won mage robes, his undertunic seemed threadbare and worn. When the sun grew fat on the Western horizon, Duncan gestured to a near shore, and they ran aground on one of the large islands which Lake Calenhad's Northern reaches boasted. Duncan's companions would have gone on, he said, rowing all night. Evidently she'd get to meet this Alistair and the other two recruits at their destination.

"And where is that, exactly?" She finally asked, once their small fire had cooked a pheasant for their supper.

Duncan paused, considering, and evidently judged her worthy of knowing the truth. "We head to Ostagar, at the foot of the Korcari Wilds. I apologize...I should have spoken with you. Before. If I had..."

"I were a might distracted at the time," she said to the fire. Her black hair was up, revealing her small, pointed ears. When it hung loose about her shoulders, she could almost pass for human, though her accent lilted at the edges of some of her words. She wondered where Jowan was, if he was even still alive. "Have you seen blood magic before?" Her crimson eyes moved to him, on the other side of the flames.

"Once, when I was new to the Wardens," he admitted. "I am sorry I was not there to witness it at the tower..." She could not meet his eyes, and so watched the flames dance in the griffon emblem on his breastplate. He'd said he often slept in his armour, but he wouldn't drown in it. Athadra swallowed and chewed her lip absent-mindedly. She remembered him bickering with Knight-Commander Greagoir, outside of her cell. There are worse things in the world than blood mages. It had taken him a day to find her after the incident with Jowan, and then a day for him to convince First Enchanter Irving and the Knight-Commander to release her into his custody. That had given her plenty of time to get to know her gaoler, whether she'd wanted to or not. "Do you know it?"

Athadra blinked and shivered, her gaze regaining his face. "No," she said, shaking her head. "Jowan didn't tell me he did, either. Not that that kept them from tryin' to ship me off to Aeonar." Duncan frowned in displeasure, but she could not tell if that was from mention of the mages' prison, or the fact that she wasn't a maleficar.

"Ostagar," she probed, trying to change the subject.

"Ostagar," Duncan echoed. "I assume you know where it is. It's the closest fortified position to the Groundbreak-what we call the point where the Blight first begins. We are lucky, in a way, that the Groundbreak happened deep in the Wilds."

"I'd bet the Chasind don't feel the same way," Athadra interjected.

He grunted. "Be that as it may, the Chasind are a small price to pay to decapitate a Blight. Even Denerim would be a better field of battle than the heart of Thedas." His brow drew down as he contemplated the flames, and Athadra shivered. "We have suffered peace for too long; only the Qunari have turned us away from our petty distractions in four centuries. Now we have an Archdemon at the gates of Ferelden, and only thirteen Wardens and three recruits to face it." He seemed to be talking to himself, now, and Athadra did not interrupt him. After a few long moments he sighed. "We should turn in for the night; if we start early, we can make the Redcliffe docks by nightfall next."

Athadra tucked herself into her sleeping furs, holding her staff flush against her, both for ease of access and for the subtle warmth it gave off. She heard wolves howling from the other side of the island, but Duncan assured her that their fire would keep burning through the night, and so she fell asleep to the sound of waves breaking on the shore.

The next morning saw her tangled in her furs with wet leaves in her mouth; more floated around her, stuck on the transparent force field she'd cast just before jerking awake. Duncan kept his distance until the spell faded. They'd both screamed in the night for their own reasons, but neither saw fit to mention it. They decamped in silence once more; Athadra was merely glad to put as many miles between herself and the Circle as she could row.
Breakfast was berries and nuts eaten on the boat between oarstrokes, and there was no lunch. By the time the sun had passed its zenith, Athadra could make out nothing of the island on which they'd bivouacked the previous night, nor any sign of another shore. They could have been lost in the Amaranthine Ocean and heading Eastward, off the edge of the world, for all she could tell.

"I wasn't under the impression the Circle let its mages develop their strength," Duncan remarked near mid-afternoon, after nine hours of steady work. They were sweating again, and the boat smelt worse than the spider-infested storage catacombs of the tower.

"Came to the Circle when I were ten," she answered, her voice cracking after so long without use. When Duncan arched an eyebrow at her, she grunted, letting out a long sigh. Her arms didn't stop their slow rhythm, matching his as closely as she could. "My grandad were Dalish and had the touch of magic, but he weren't a Keeper, nor in line to become one."

"Surely he could have become Keeper of another clan," Duncan observed. "Or founded his own."

"Don't ask me. All I know's that he settled down with my gran just outside Lothering. That way." She looked off to her right and back behind her shoulder, imagining she could see across the water to the sleepy little village. "We were tenant farmers, no land of our own. It kept the shems from asking too many questions." Her accent was thickening a bit, almost consciously. Outside of the gaze of the templars and her tutors, she felt less pressure to sound like the elves from the alienages.

Duncan cleared his throat. "That doesn't explain how you've kept up with me, Athadra," he pointed out.

She paused. Her name sounded odd coming from his lips, until she realized he hadn't said it with a templar's sneer. "Like I said, the tin-tops didn't catch me 'till I were ten. Most mages get sprung the first time they show, or not long after. I were a late bloomer..." she snorted. "Grandad taught me how to put my magic in my muscles a bit, to help keep me safe. Lots of mages get caught because their magic comes out in an obvious way. Grandad, he was teaching me even before my mam knew for sure I had the touch."

"And so rather than burning or freezing..."

"I just get a bit stronger, aye. It's not much-you could still beat me at arm wrestling. Probably." She caught him smirking, and could hardly believe it when her lips quirked in their turn. "But it let me have five, maybe six years more with my mam and dad than most mages ever get. I still have good memories, and that's a sight better than anyone else I know from the Circle."

"You must have kept it secret," he said with a hint of approval. "The Chantry doesn't allow some of the magic it knows about explicitly...I shudder to think how they might respond to the learning of abilities that they haven't already sifted through."

"I had to keep it quiet, aye. They don't even let us handleweapons, much less exercise. They keep us dependent on our magic and then blame us for having it. It's disgusting." She found herself relieved, able to say things she dared not even think for nearly half her life. If that's what being a Grey Warden meant, she'd volunteer every season if it were necessary.

"I've done my best to stay out of Chantry politics, but I've seen what the mages undergo," Duncan observed. "It is a wonder this semblance of order has held fast for so long..."

As the conversation continued, Athadra realized Duncan would not ask her about how she got caught, and breathed a silent sigh of relief. Talking also distracted her from the growing ache in her forearms. Before she knew it, the sun was setting and she could just make out the Southeast shore of Lake Calenhad when she turned her head. Within the hour, the great lake narrowed; a cliff with a castle built into it rose up to the left, while a mid-sized village grew out of the lakeshore directly behind them.

There was no attendant at the dock waiting for them, so Duncan tied up the boat and suited up in semidarkness. "We will find an inn to rest for the night. I would suggest separate rooms, but I'm acquainted with the arl. His lady wife is not fond of mages, and I would not put it past her to have eyes and ears on the lookout."

Athadra looked down at her soiled robes. They were dirty and sweat-stained, but unmistakably mage's attire, and it didn't take her long to agree with the Grey Warden. "As long as you sleep on the floor," she warned.

"Naturally," Duncan replied. He fussed with the buckles of his breastplate until he was satisfied, and then got Athadra to help him distribute their supplies into two packs. They left the boat bare save for the oars. "We'll see about trading her in the morning."

In the gloom, she spied a building well-lit from the inside, with coloured windows. "I assume that's the Chantry," she remarked. It was the largest building in sight, save the castle on the hill. Duncan nodded, and did not protest when she set out along the planks of the dock, trying to put the nearest clapboard hut between her and the Chantry.

As soon as she turned the corner, however, she ran face-first into the flaming sword of a templar's breastplate. She tried to jump back, but her knees buckled. The air was driven from her lungs by an unseen force, and she couldn't catch herself, collapsing into a heap at the templar's feet.

"What are you doing here, mage?" the man asked, his voice muffled by the full-cover helmet he wore. He moved to bend down but froze suddenly when a long dagger materialized against his throat and another sought the joint of his armour at his armpit.

Athadra saw Duncan's boots standing between her and the templar. When she looked up, she saw that the Grey Warden was shorter than the man he held at knifepoint, but the tin-man was utterly under his control. "You address Duncan, senior Grey Warden of Ferelden," he said in a cool, almost conversational tone. "My newest recruit seems to have lost her footing. Would you say that was happenchance?"

The templar took the measure of the man in front of him, fixing on the iconic griffon emblem and the blue-and-silver padding that characterized Grey Warden armour. "Knife-ear there is a mage, rowing a boat from th' tower inna dark," he said. From where Athadra lay she could already smell the alcohol on his breath. "Whossi s'posed to think?" He held up his hands in a supplicating gesture.

Duncan reluctantly pulled his daggers back, but he didn't sheath either of them. "Let your commanding officer know that I am here, and that I have an elf mage in my charge. Our stay will be brief, but if we are harassed in any way by the Chantry or the templars, Arl Eamon and King Cailan will both know the reasons why."

Those names sobered the templar up more quickly than Athadra thought possible without a rejuvenation spell, and he gave his cross-armed solute. "Yessir, I'll let them know, sir." He bowed and scampered off, nearly falling off the wharf in the process.

"Fool," Duncan scoffed before turning his attention to the mage. "Can you stand?"

Athadra's lips parted, but she couldn't speak, and so instead she shook her head. Duncan muttered to himself in Orlesian and knelt, scooping the elf girl into his arms as though she weighed nothing at all. She hesitated for a heartbeat before collapsing into his chest, and she started trembling despite herself. Duncan found the tavern and inn from whence the templar had evidently come, and he procured for them a small room and a hot meal.

"Got any lyrium?" Athadra asked after her stomach began protesting the greyish, lumpy gruel the tavern called its Ferelden Special. Duncan dug in his pack and handed her a small vial filled with glowing blue liquid, and she downed it greedily. "The Void-taken bastard smited me without a thought."

"Some would say it was his duty," Duncan pointed out sullenly. The gruel evidently didn't agree with him, either.

"To the Void with his sodding duty, too. When am I going to get some armour like that?" She couldn't help but remember how quickly the griffon symbol had commanded the templar's respect.

"We've assembled a cache of equipment at Ostagar. You'll meet the others there, and likely some of the high-ranking civilians." When he saw her raised eyebrow he chuckled at himself. "That's what we call those who aren't Grey Wardens, whether they fight or not."

"To their faces?" She managed another half-smile.

"Only when occasion demands it." He knocked back the rest of his bowl and swallowed a belch. "Pardonnez moi, merci," he said reflexively.

"Du rien," she responded in kind. When his own eyebrow arched she shrugged. "On apprend plus que magique dans le Cercle," she supplied before yawning. "A day and a half of rowing topped off with a Holy Smite. I think I'm going to sleep now. Try not to get too many splinters."

Duncan snorted and, true to his word, settled on the floorboards between the bedding and the door. Exhaustion took Athadra, and this time her sleep was blessedly dreamless.