The Iron Dragon

Chapter 42. A New Beginning

Nobody stirred and nobody dared to say another word. The words that had come from Inquisitor Lavellan made the rest of the group look at me in expectation and I myself could only stand there and not be able to answer anything that would have been halfway clever. I would have lied if I had said that I didn't feel a thousand questions shoot through my head at that moment. My mind was trying to form words but my lips saw this whole situation on a completely different level and seemed to disobey me.

"I...I...so...could you repeat that again? ". I must have misunderstood the whole thing, it couldn't be that she had said what I thought she had said. As if she could see my inner dilemma, she smiled and repeated her words.

"I think it would be a great honor for all of us if you would grace the Inquisition with your presence, and therefore I would like you to join us". She had said it again, and yet it sounded again to me like something impossible that I simply could not understand. I looked into her face and tried to see something behind her facial expressions to read what was behind her expression. I wandered from her smile to her eyes, because they were supposedly the gateway to her soul. But I didn't recognize anything but pure honesty behind them and the desire to really have myself by her side. I was more than confused as I searched for more clues that her eyes could still hide until I came across something that overwhelmed me a little bit inside. I saw the firm and unshakeable faith. I saw a determination that only someone who believed one hundred percent in his cause and would stop at nothing until everyone could live in peace and security.

The reason why all these things overwhelmed me was that only one person had ever looked at me like that before. I had often seen this look in my mother's eyes when she looked at me, and when I was very young, I had often not been able to read what was behind her looks. Later I asked her and she told me that every mother should look at her child that way because she believed in me and that I could achieve what I wanted in life for everyone with complete determination. I looked at the others in the group and they too looked frighteningly confident about my joining.

"Oh come on jewels, a guy from the dark brood wants to play God we could use someone to set something on fire every now and then". Varric's words made a lot of sense and I could hear in his voice that he would like it if we had a little fire against Corypheus but what interested me more than Corypheus was whether he had actually just called me jewels or if the whole situation was starting to hit my ears.

"It would be...good to have someone who could advise us on some things and help us find out more about our enemy. I also see it similar to Varric, it would be good to have someone with your talents with us, you might really be some kind of...enrichment". I looked at Cassandra and was honestly glad that she saw it that way as well, because I could imagine that if she didn't like someone, she could do scary things and that it would be better to keep a distance. But I couldn't help noticing the look of the dwarf at her words, which looked like someone who had just seen a dwarf riding through the sky on a golem, in other words he seemed really amazed and surprised by the words of the warrior and that even though we had a green glowing hole in the sky, which most likely wanted to destroy us all. I took the whole thing as an indication that words of kindness from Lady Penthagast did not come often or at least never to him.

"An enrichment? Don't tell me you're getting soft Seeker". Varric got, as thanks for his words, a wonderful snide look that could have silenced anyone and I got the information that I seemed to have a real Seeker in front of me and I admitted to myself that I found it very impressive. So she was not only a damn good warrior and occasional dragon slayer, but also a seeker of truth. As I heard, the seekers were an elite unit directly under the command of the church or rather directly under the Divine herself. They controlled a large part of the Knights Templar so that they followed all the rules that were imposed on them. If anything got out of hand in these orders, it was the Seekers who were the first to hear about it and who were the first to make sure that everything was put right very quickly. They were also there for the protection of the Church and made sure that all threats to the Divine were destroyed. Also the seekers had really impressive skills and were specialists in the fight against renegade magicians. To most Templars, the Seekers were hated and at the same time unbelievably feared because most Templars could hardly stand up to a Seeker and they also knew that they would have to answer to them if they had done something wrong.