Magician

https://author.today/u/Black_B_Nick

Dragon Age. The Magician

Pop fanfiction on Dragon Age Origin

Autor: Чёрный Ник

The Prologue

I love weekends. I love it even more when there are a lot of them — you can get enough sleep for your own pleasure. Like today, for example. What can I do, I'm a chronic "night owl" and I'm personally quite happy with that. But it can be difficult to explain it to others.

After lying around for a while longer, I got up, waved my arms a little, banishing the remnants of sleep to where they should be, and went on the usual morning `toilet-bathroom-kitchen' run. In the kitchen, I thought about what to cook today. After going through half a dozen options, I settled on sandwiches. It's not that I'm that lazy or I don't know how to cook, I just love sandwiches. For example, a ham and tomato sandwich is not a wonderful thing? In my opinion, very much so. Especially in the morning. You can already figure out something more serious for lunch. By the way, I have to run to the store.

Going grocery shopping once again convinced me that you can learn something new every day, even from seemingly familiar things.

"`Contains juice.' Tin," I commented aloud on the colorful label, putting the bottle in the refrigerator. "We're all going to die. How can you drink juice?"

That's why you can't learn something useful from overseas "friends", and not just any nonsense? It's one of those mysteries of nature that I'm unlikely to ever understand.

After unloading, I realized that I had absolutely nothing to do in the next couple of hours. I didn't want to do anything-it had been a busy week and the very thought of work was disgusting. There was nothing to watch either — a phenomenon that is quite familiar in our time, when there are fifty channels, but they are of zero use. The movies on the hard drive have been reviewed and no replenishment is expected yet. After thinking about it, I decided to implement a long-standing idea — to complete the "Age of the Dragon" toy with all the installed add-ons. Actually, it had already been passed more than once, but the cunning Biowars, releasing new additions, forced them to start all over again. Now, when the official modules for the first part were no longer expected, it was possible to safely install them all and take your time. That's exactly what I did — I installed the game itself, all the official modules, and several unofficial ones — mostly related to graphics — and confidently clicked on the shortcut on the Desktop. The background is a magician (I have a weakness for them, I choose magicians in almost any game), tinkering with the character's face and, finally, the start.

At the same moment, I felt like I had fallen down somewhere, and I saw a surprised and somehow very familiar face in front of me, which I bumped into head-on...

Chapter 1. the Fade

This is a "g-g-g" for a reason...

A wise thought

"Wh-what was that?" I asked in amazement, holding my head. The ringing caused by the collision was subsiding inside my precious shard, and I slowly realized that I was not sitting in my favorite computer chair, fitted to my ass, but on... ground. An ordinary piece of land, overgrown with sparse grass. And it's not the walls of my apartment that are around, but some kind of ruins. And I'm not wearing sweatpants, but some kind of chlamydia. And it's all v-very familiar. Especially if you imagine that you're not looking like you are now, sitting on the ground, but from above. Still holding my head, I carefully got to my feet and turned around. Well, that's right — there was a tree behind it, not a tree, but something very similar, with a trunk forked in the shape of an uneven arch. A sparse dark mist swirled under the arch. It seems that I was in the initial location of the game, and in the role of the main character.

Maybe I'm dreaming after all, huh? I couldn't believe my own sudden captivity. Most likely, he was sitting at his computer, and he passed out unnoticed. Or I haven't even woken up at all and I'm still sleeping soundly. It happens to me. After all, it's possible to check the same thing. A vase caught my eye, obeying the usual effort of thought, floated into the air and hovered half a meter from the ground. No, I'm definitely dreaming. I wish I could do that in the real world.

I thought about it. If I'm dreaming, then waking up and missing out on such a wonderful dream is just a sin. And if not, it means that I got into a computer game, which by definition cannot be.

The reality of the dream was beyond praise. My dreams are often very clear as it is, but I would give this a score of twelve out of ten. There are no smells, but this is a normal phenomenon. Everything is wonderful to see, vague, just a little, audible... I haven't heard anything yet. There's not even a breeze. There are tactile sensations, and they are much clearer than usual. Awesome. Now just don't wake up ahead of time, otherwise it will be a shame.

So, here we have the very beginning of the game, a location called the Fade. By the way, it's a dream world there, which is funny in itself. Okay, since I'm pretending to be a magician, I need to upgrade my arsenal quickly. Levitating yourself or foreign objects by five has been practiced in thousands of dreams.

And something more combative? Lightning is no big problem, freezing is a little more difficult, but it's also good, but with fire, as always, it's not very good. After a couple of seconds of concentration, a halo of flame surrounded his palm, stretched out like a flamethrower jet and set fire to a bush. He tried to set it on fire, or rather, because the bush shrank and turned black, but refused to burn.

Well, the leshiy is with him. I shook off the remnants of the fire and tried to just slightly change the situation. A planned brick wall emerged from the ground with an effort. In short, my abilities were no different from the usual ones in the world of dreams. Of course, there are a few more tricks, but there's just nothing to test them on.

Okay, stop standing in one place, or you'll grow into the ground soon. I told myself. What did we have at the beginning of the game? I'm unlikely to see pop-up windows with educational text, but here are, say, the contents of that vase over there...

Yeah. Actually, there were supposed to be three glowing spheres in the vase — an analogue of a healing potion in the Fade. Instead, I found a pile of dust there. A grandiose loot. Oh, and the dog with them, I'll manage.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and spun around. Ugh... Statue. The one, either alive or not. I mean, everything in the Fade is either spirits or their creation. Often it is not even possible to distinguish one from the other. I didn't stare at the statue for long-there should be more interesting things here. So, turning my back on her, I went down the hill, on top of which there were ruins, and stomped along the path I found. But I didn't go far — literally right there, at the foot, there was a flying wisp of light, which did not slow down to hit me with a weak lightning bolt.

The pain wasn't real. I could tolerate her without much trouble, but that doesn't mean I have to let all sorts of half-dead demons hurl spells at me. Even in a dream. The answering lightning scattered Visp into glowing dust. I pointedly blew on the tip of my finger and pretended to put the gun in the holster. I wonder if I can dodge the lightning?

It turned out that I can if I really want to. A hissing discharge from another visp shot over his shoulder, and a second later, Visp himself was encased in a miniature iceberg. Picking up the ice cube with my mind, I threw it off the path, beyond which there was nothing. Contrary to expectations, she did not fall, but just slowly floated off into the distance. I didn't wait for the third visp, who I met a couple of minutes later, to act -I just struck him with lightning as soon as I saw him. We can keep going.

The path plunged into a cleft between two hills. Now, in theory, I should meet my fellow traveler in the Shadows — a former student of the magician, nicknamed Mouse. He's not really a student, he's a demon, and he's one of the coolest, but I'm not supposed to know that.

No matter how hard I looked at the landscape, I still missed its appearance. It's not surprising — huge gnarled trees without leaves, strange vegetation, as if from another planet, green sky with light dark clouds, dim sun... Is he supposed to be here or not? The devil only knows. And there's the Black City — that's another sight. Even from here it is clear that it is huge, but nothing but a not very clear silhouette hanging somewhere in the distance can be seen.

"Someone was thrown to the wolves. Fresh and not ready at all. A voice comes from the ground and I start." Here's the Mouse, still in the form of a mouse proper. Or rather, rats-he's a little big for a mouse.

"A talking mouse," I say thoughtfully, and realize that I've exactly repeated the phrase of a character from the game.

"Well, it's always the same," Mouse sighs and changes shape. In the game, this happened with a flash of light. Here, the mouse simply grows in size, simultaneously changing in appearance, until it completely becomes a human. "Do you really think you look like this? Your appearance is a reflection of your own thoughts."

"You don't have to explain it to me," I grin, remembering Morpheus from the Matrix. In principle, I can do that myself. It didn't occur to me to turn into a mouse, but, say, it's easy to grow wings. "What's your name?"

"You can call me Mouse. Let me greet you in the Fade" the interlocutor introduces himself with a slight sarcasm in his voice.

"I allow it," I answer him in the same tone. "The name, of course, is not real?"

"Right. I don't remember much of it... the past," Mouse shrugs. "Templars don't wait too long. If you stay here for more than a certain period of time, they will decide that you have been defeated and will simply kill you. That's probably what happened to me-I just had nowhere to go back to."

"Yeah, sure. He has nowhere to go."

"You should hurry up too," adds the disguised demon.

"How long have you been living like this?" I ask, starting off.

"I do not remember. It's hard to count time here, and memory is slowly fading." Mouse walked beside him, taking his time to transform back. By the way, he looked like an ordinary village guy who was wearing a magical robe, the same one I'm wearing now, except that it was red, not blue. If I hadn't known he was a demon, I might have believed it.

"Do you know what's ahead?"

"Perfume. Demons," he shrugs again. "You need to defeat the demon to complete the challenge. But be careful — if the demon defeats you, it will take over your body and try to get out of here in it."

"It's clear. It's a stupid test."

"When you come back, ask why it was invented. Do you mind if I follow you? I haven't had a chance for a long time, but with you, maybe there will be some way out."

With that, he turned back into a mouse.

"Go if you want," I said. I wonder how he's going to keep up with me like this.

It turned out that there were no problems. The mouse moved his paws smartly, and quite kept up with my walking pace. The path wound whimsically, we walked along it, and around the next bend we found a clearing surrounded by fire.

"The test takes place here," Mouse said. "The creature can appear anywhere, but it comes here."

I haven't started planning for the future location of the battle yet. There was someone else ahead who was worth visiting first, so we stomped on. To be honest, my hands itched to work on the landscape — it was very dull. At least add some grass, normal, green, and not this gray-brown-indistinct squalor. Normal trees, land that doesn't suddenly break off into the unknown, yes and.. I held back my imagination and squinted at the Mouse. Let's see how things turn out. Maybe I'll do something more fun.

Walking just like that, in silence, was a bit boring. No one was in a hurry to attack, so I started a leisurely conversation with Mouse, in which I mostly asked questions, and he gave useful information, cursed at the templars, or simply whined about his current life. To be honest, there wasn't much useful information.

The glowing figure in armor, standing peacefully off to the side of the road and contemplating something, appeared just in time — the questions that I could ask the "magician's apprentice" without arousing his suspicions were over, and it was not interesting to stomp just like that. In general, it's strange — usually events in a dream go much faster.

"It's the spirit of Valor," Mouse said without waiting for a question. "You know, I always thought his name was stupid."

I went to the spirit, but the Mouse stayed on the path. Either he was afraid that the spirit would recognize him, or for some other reason, the demon knows him.

"Another mortal was thrown into a fire and left to burn in it." The spirit commented as soon as I got closer. "You magicians have strange ways of educating newcomers."

"Well, I didn't have much choice", I chuckled, looking at the impressive collection of weapons on his back. It was lying on wooden racks, it was stuck in the ground, and some of it was just floating in the air. For the most part, I didn't even know the names. "Did you really do all this yourself?"

"Sure. This weapon was created by the power of my desire. I know that in your world, only magicians can make their desires come true. How empty and boring the lives of others must be!"

I didn't argue with him. If he wants to think so, it's his business, I won't enlighten him.

"Can your weapon help against a demon?"

"Undoubtedly. But if you want to get it, you'll have to fight me."

"Am I empty-handed against you with guns and armor?" I asked skeptically, looking him over. A walking tank is if you try to describe a spirit in a nutshell. Full armor, a sword with a shield on his back, and half a head taller than me, not to mention beefy.

"Aren't you a magician?" Was that a sneer in his voice, or was it my imagination?

"A magician," I agreed thoughtfully, finishing the inspection. "And really, why not swing a little bit..."

"Then fight with valor!" You're a damn prankster. I managed to jump back when the spirit, with an imperceptible movement, pulled a sword and shield from behind his back and put his hands forward. I materialized a force barrier in front of him. The sword whizzed past him, but it didn't stop, as I had hoped, but only slowed down a lot. He's strong, damn it. While continuing to focus on defense, I waved my hand, sending a lightning bolt at the spirit. He deflected it with his shield, but staggered as he did so. It looks like I'm worth something too. And if so? Throwing my arms out in front of me, I sent a telekinetic punch at the spirit and almost immediately tried to freeze it. The impact knocked him back much harder than the lightning, but he still managed to stay on his feet, but the freezing only slowed him down a little. I struck with lightning again, this time with two hands at the same time, releasing a shower of discharges. It seemed that this was already serious — the spirit, shielding itself with a shield, although it was moving forward, but it moved as if it was resisting a strong wind, and its glow was clearly getting weaker. Finally, he stopped, stuck his sword into the ground, and raised his hand. I stopped the "bombardment" and took a deep breath.