Chapter Text
The first time the girl summoned the demons from the sky, she was barely a week past the fateful day when she received both her name and her curse.
She was the fifth child, the fifth girl at that, and most--her parents included--were of the opinion that four girls were already more than enough for one family. So while the naming celebration was as brilliant an affair as anyone could expect from the seventh most illustrious family in the city (or was it eighth?), no one paid much mind to the cooing infant in the bassinet. Given the inability to understand the imperious glances cast over the crystal rims of champagne flutes, it was no matter to her. Neither did she care about the Tevinter emissary and his ostentatious party muttering under their breath over the indignity of being forced to share a celebration with a drooling infant arrived too early into the arms of their distant relations.
The old woman arrived into the glittering ballroom with no announcement from the servant at the door. She had not been invited. The shabby homespun of her dress, soaked through with rain, made for poor comparison to the fashionable array of pastel flounces spinning like open parasols around the polished marble. It wasn’t long before her presence was noted with a degree of scandalized shock and awe. But before Trevelyan could summon his indignation up from the dregs of his wineglass, the aged and crooked spine was already bending over the bassinet, one clawed hand grasping a strange round device that sparked with green electricity.
From the depths of yellow satin, chubby pink hands reached towards the burst of color.
In an explosion of light both crone and device vanished. Some insisted that the in the moments before, ancient lips chanted an elvish incantation...but none of the accounts were very reliable given the chaos that ensued. Several women, including Lady Trevelyan, had taken to screaming and fluttering into pathetic heaps onto the floor, revived only by smelling salts. In truth, only one had thought to check the contents of the ruined bassinet immediately--the young Tevinter lad who had accompanied the dignitary’s entourage. But when the furor had diminished, the boy had disappeared and with him, the Tevinters. By the time anyone else bothered to look, the child was found sleeping soundly, nestled in char and ash, looking hale and whole save for the vivid green mark sputtering on the back of one chubby hand.
Afterwards everyone felt rather foolish for being taken in so. It was decided that the Tevinter relations had elected to play some callous prank, involving the magical prowess the country was well known for. The local physician diagnosed the strange mark as nothing more than the result of a serious electrical burn. Quite normal, it would vanish in a few weeks after application with his medicinal salve. Everyone promptly resolved that was the end of it.
But the servants, like most common folk given to superstition and belief in fantastical things like elvish curses, muttered the Chant of Light under their breath and crushed petals of Andraste’s Grace into sachets secreted away between the pillows of the child’s crib. One of the maids was particularly fervent in her belief and, after a week of devout contemplating, she stole out with the child in the dead of night and attempted the old folk cure for such things.
However normally predisposed to a happy temperament, the child did not at all like the frigid cold of the mountain stream that ran in the quiet wood just a mile from the estate. It was a hearty and shrill cry she let out before being submerged entirely in the waters. The maid had barely lifted the screaming infant out when the rift opened up in the sky and a creature stepped out to snap the woman up and break her spine cleanly in two.
It isn’t known what would have happened next if the man traveling to Kirkwall hadn’t shown up at that exact moment, perhaps hearing the cry of the infant from the distant road. He slew the creature with his pistol and plucked the soaking child from the mossy bank. A physician of some skill, he was able to resuscitate the girl and take her back to her parents.
He stayed on for several weeks, being something of an expert on ailments of the unnatural variety, and it was thanks to his expertise that the youngest girl was not immediately sent off to the Ostwick sanitorium despite the mark that refused to fade from her hand even after weeks of due diligence applying salve. Under his advisement, the Trevelyans replaced the serving staff with those more experienced with keeping strange occurrences discreet.
By then, the tale of the curse had spread through the town--with dramatic consequences. Weapons in hand, the townspeople combed the surrounding lands, seeking twisted justice for the young infant Trevelyan and the elven magic that he scarred her small hand. Not before long, they combed the city streets. After days of bloodshed, the teyrn conceded to public outcry. The alienage was torn down, its inhabitants cast out and chased from Ostwick.
But their fear was not sated and as the cursed child grew, they watched her closely. She was demon-touched, they knew, and she would bring down a terrible host upon them all.