Problems

Reda had problems.

Oh, did she ever have problems.

It was supposed to have been a routine patrol. Go out, find darkspawn, kill them. Simple. Routine. The problem had been that there hadn't been any darkspawn in the assigned patrol area. In hindsight, that should have been an immediate giveaway that problems would follow. She should have expected something. She hadn't and the rest of the members of her ten soldier squad patrol had paid the price for her hubris. She hoped at least one of the others had managed to get away, but she doubted it. This was no darkspawn attack.

This had been a meticulously planned and executed ambush and she had walked right into it. She hadn't seen a thing before the ballista bolt had torn out of the dark cross tunnel to kill three of her squad. Then the storm of crossbow bolts. Then the dark figures, too precise to be darkspawn. Their armor and weapons matched hers. One look and she had known. Her past had caught up with her yet again. She had ordered the pitiful remnants of her squad to retreat and then leapt off another way. Of course, the assailants had followed her. She was their target. As she ran, she cursed herself.

Had she gone soft? Was she succumbing to some kind of illness? Or something worse?

That made her shudder a bit as she ran. She had seen others fall. No one seemed to know why some could wade through darkspawn blood all day long with no ill effects and others would look at it and catch the corruption. It was what it was. Maybe it was the lyrium or stone dust in her blood? She was a dwarf after all and she knew her kind's resilience all too well after eleven years of fighting. Maybe if she had managed to find the Grey Wardens when she had looked? No. Time to ruminate on the past after she saved her skin.

"There!" A voice behind her called out and she poured on even more speed, twisting this way and that to avoid the bolts she knew were coming. Two, three, four bolts flew by her as she evaded as hard as she could. To stand and fight against so many assassins was madness. They had come prepared to slaughter an entire squad. Unless she found some kind of-

Whang

She hit the wall and rolled, pain flaring in her side. She knew without looking that one of the bolts that had been hissing by her had found it's mark. But she was far from finished.

"Go to the Stone, traitor." The voice said from behind her. The voice gasped as she spun, her sword coming out in a perfectly timed arc.

There was no honor in this kind of fight. There was only survival. Her opponent had full plate armor, a shield and an axe. She had her sword. But said sword had never failed her in the years since she had been handed it. The day she had died in the eyes of all of her peers. She could only see the one assassin. But there had to be others. Probably closing in on her flanks to try to blindside her. She had no shield. It didn't matter.

The other moved forward, confident that his shield and heavier armor gave him an advantage and to an extent, it did. But Reda had been fighting for years. The only reward for a job well done in Reda's experience was a harder job. She had clawed up through the ranks of her new home and worked herself and her soldiers into a finely tuned fighting machine. Darkspawn relied on simple overwhelming numbers in most situations, but she and her squad had occasionally run into darkspawn that looked different. Who acted different. Those fights had always been brutal. Those fights were why Reda had stopped carrying a shield.

The assassin was so focused on Reda's sword that he never saw the tiny crossbow that thrummed in her off hand. Her aim was as true as ever. Even assassins had to see and the eyeslits of the helm were easy to pick out. The toxin was just as potent on her kind as it was on darkspawn. The assassin fell without a sound and Reda took a moment to look down at herself. Her armor had a neat little hole punched in it and a small pointed thing stuck out of her side. The point of a crossbow bolt. It had punched clean through her plate and through her. She wasn't bleeding that she could see, but she probably was inside. She reloaded her crossbow as she started off again.

She would not give her brother the satisfaction of seeing her corpse. If she had to die, she wanted to vanish. Let him look over his shoulder for the rest of his life wondering if she was going to appear. Her steps were slower now, and she didn't recognize any of what she saw. She had fled far outside her usual area of operation. That was both good and bad. Good in that her people, if any had survived the ambush, had a better chance to get away as she led the assassins away from them. Bad in that she had no idea where she was or where she was going. Going back meant running into the assassins. So forward was her only choice.

There had been a time when she had wanted nothing more than to go back and behead her brother with a dull table knife. Frankly? She still wanted to. Just not as much. Her father had been right. Tradition had its place, but her brother by all accounts had managed to do more in his short time in charge than many others had in centuries. He was working to put the dwarven people forward and by all accounts -even disregarding blatant propaganda- it was working.

She still hated him. There was not a day that went by that she did not curse her brother. Did not curse her own ignorance. Her blindness. She hadn't wanted to believe and that had cost her everything. She had known how the other nobles had played. How they had schemed. How they had worked to kill off rivals in totally deniable fashions. But in her wildest dreams, she had never imagined that her own family could fall prey to such. She had loved them all. Stone take them, she had loved them all...

Reda jerked awake, cursing herself. She had dozed off. But her feet were still moving. She was still alive. For now anyway. She had to get away from the assassins. They would not stop until they had her corpse or they were all dead. It had been five years since the last group, but the pattern was the same. That time, it had only been her and a friend against five of them in an alley. It hadn't even been close to a fair fight. She and her friend and trounced the lot of them. Her mouth moved in a small smile as she thought of her friend. And odder pair no one had likely ever seen, but she would put Shayle of House Cadash up against anyone. She likely wouldn't see Shayle again.

Meeting Shayle had been...odd. Then again, Reda wasn't a normal 'dwarf' any more than any other was. Reda had been fascinated by a set of odd crystals that she had seen in the middle of one of her training patrols in her previous life. She had never seen anything like them. She had carefully collected them and taken them to the Shapers. The Shapers had never seen anything like them. They were not dangerous according to all her sources and they were pretty. So, she had collected them. She had possessed several dozen different varieties before her exile.

It had been... Well, she couldn't say how long she had been alone. With no means of keeping time -after all, who wastes such on an exile sent to die in the Deep Roads?- it had all blurred. She had tried to find the Grey Wardens as her guard had said. But she had failed. She had wandered the Deep Roads, scavenging, looting, going hungry more often than not. She never -quite- got hungry enough to try to eat darkspawn. She knew the tales warning against that.

Then her life had changed and-

Reda went still as a sound reached her ears. Behind her, well behind her, the scuff of an armored boot on stone. She flattened to the wall and considered her options. If she tried to go back, she was dead. If she tried to fight with a crossbow bolt in her, even glancing as the wound seemed to be, she was dead. Then her eyes lit on something different. Another tunnel. But this one...

The markings were different. Not even many dwarves could read the ancient trail markers that dotted the Deep Roads. She had made it a point to learn how. It had saved her life and the lives of her companions more than once. This wasn't a common marking and she took a moment to grasp it's meaning. When she did, it was all she could do not to gasp. 'Surface Access'

The Surface.

Reda wasn't sure about this. She had heard stories about the surface of course. Most had. But most of those stories were the kind you told around fires after a hard day's fighting, usually with a healthy swig of ale to help the story along. The whole concept seemed alien to her. She had lived her whole life -both of them- surrounded by the Stone. To have nothing overhead... This 'sky' thing...

She heard the scuff again. It was closer, that boot and the wearer was obviously trying to be sneaky. Hard to do in full plate. Then another, and another. Her pursuer was not alone.

She had no choice. She darted for the cross tunnel and nothing hit her, but she continued quickly. Perhaps they would turn back? Oh who was she kidding? If these were, as she surmised, her brother's assassin's, then if they came back without her body, then their pain would last years. They would pursue her until they died or she did. Simple as that.

The way sloped up far steeper than any natural cavern or any Deep Road she had ever seen. Her side hurt like fire, but she ignored it. But then it came to an end. She stared around wildly, but the road just...stopped. It didn't look as if it had caved in. It just ended. Had they not completed the access? She shook her head and sighed, focusing herself to die fighting. It was no less than expected of a daughter of House Aeducan. She had expected to die within a week of leaving Orzammar. She hadn't. As she checked her blade, her eyes caught on an oddity nearby. Something out of place. She stared at the wall, unsure of what had caught her eye. Then she had it. A door. Partially blocked by rubble!

She moved to the door and heaved a sigh of relief as she saw the rubble wasn't piled against the door. It had been piled in front of it. To hide it? That spoke of someone using it. When Reda tried the door, it opened far easier than an ancient Deep Roads door should have. Carta used such doors to smuggle goods in and out if the Deep Roads. If they found her here, the best she could hope for was a fight to the death. At worst? They would sell her still living body to her brother. Reda shuddered at that. Some of the stories out of Orzammar... She fingered the small pouch at her side that held her crossbow bolts with their toxic heads. A small stab and she would join the Stone. But she wasn't ready for that just yet.

She opened the door and heaved a silent sigh of relief as she saw, not a force of Carta, or even a guard, but a ladder. It went up into the darkness and she gave another inaudible sigh as she reached for the rungs.

Every muscle hurt when Reda made it to the top of the ladder. She had no idea how long she had been climbing. A quick glance about showed no body at all around, so she just stood and heaved great gulps of air into lungs that had been severely strained by the workout. The crossbow bolt jerked as she breathed, but she ignored it. Then she paused and grimaced. She laid the flat of her sword against the end of the bolt by touch and then, with a mighty yank, pulled the blade until it was flat to her back. This forced the bolt through her. The pain was incredible and she felt faint, but she focused past it and reached for the bolt to pull it free. She threw it aside and took great breaths again, working past her pain as her armsmasters had taught her.

She wanted nothing more than to sit down. To go to sleep and sleep for a good long time. But she knew if she did, she would likely die. Either her wound would kill her or more likely, the assassins would track her down and slaughter her in her sleep.

Then her heart gave a lurch as she heard shouts and screams. Then the hiss and roar of darkspawn. She growled, a sound eerily akin to the guttural sounds that the bestial subhuman monsters made and stalked forward, sword in hand. Her eyes went huge as she rounded a corner and saw the battle. The female dwarf wielded two full size swords as easily as Reda hefted her single blade. And her armor! A warrior of the Legion of the Dead? Here? Behind the warrior, two small forms cowered. Children?

Reda did not hesitate. She had seen the Legion, fought beside them more than once. This woman sought death. But she was protecting the two small forms and doing a damned fine job of it too. A dozen hurlocks and genlocks carpeted the ground in front of the dancing Legionnaire. And nearby, Reda could see larger shadows moving in a tunnel that came in from an angle. More darkspawn! She did not hesitate. The small orb she pulled from her belt sputtered a little as she hit the striker, but then it caught and she threw it overhand.

She had never figured out what was in those tiny red orbs. They were expensive. But they were worth every silver piece she had paid for them. The tiny orb flew into the tunnel and exploded with the force of a mage's fireball. Or course, mages rarely had their fire stick to things after and putting this fire out was very, very hard.

"Oops!" The Legionnaire shouted as she ran back. "Should have warned you! I mined-"

The blast from the tunnel was the last thing Reda saw for some time.

A few minutes later

"Is she all right?" The young Dalish elf asked timidly as Sigrun worked. She wasn't very good with people she did not know.

"She will be okay." Sigrun gave herself a shake as she finished bandaging the wounds on her sort of rescuer. "But I can't stay now that the tunnel has been sealed. Thank you for showing me where the entrance was, but next time? Run when I tell you to please."

"Yes, Grey Warden." The Dalish boy said with a wince as he moved his arm carefully. The bandage that Sigrun had put on his wound would hold him until he got back to his clan's keeper. Who would likely take both of them to task for going out in dangerous times to 'be together'.

"If I hadn't been here, both of you would be dead." Sigrun finished her work. She pulled Reda's helmet off and stared. "By the Stone..."

"Warden?" The girl asked, concerned.

Sigrun just stared at a face she had seen more than once in Orzammar. But things had changed. A lot. She was no longer the street rat she had been. This... was no longer the princess of House Aeducan. Her face was scarred by years of hard fighting. Her throat had been torn by a jagged blade, darkspawn unless Sigrun's expert eye was badly mistaken. It was unlikely she would be able to talk.

"She is hurt." Sigrun said after a moment. "Would your clan care for her if I ask?"

"Probably." The boy said a bit dubiously. "But they would need a reason."

"I can give reasons. I can even give money and what little else I have to tend her, knowledge and resources both." Sigrun said as she hefted the other onto her back. The unconscious dwarf weighed a ton, but less than some of her fellow Legionnaires had. "But only to your Keeper. Come on. We need to get out of here."

"Is she a Warden?" The girl asked as she helped her lover walk.

"Uh, no." Sigrun said with a sigh. "But she is special. She will be needed I bet. With the sky torn open and the humans all going crazy? Oh yes. She will be needed."

At a well hidden Dalish camp

"What did you say?" Keeper Renia was a kind and compassionate female elf of middle years. She knew enough to be very worried in these dark and troubled times since the Breach had torn the sky asunder.

"Her name was Sereda Aeducan." Sigrun said quietly. "She was middle child of the king of Orzammar eleven years ago when she was exiled for the murder of her brother. A murder that has since been pinned on King Behlen Aeducan. Most thought she died in the Deep Roads. She didn't."

"And... you want us to hide her." The Keeper was obviously trying hard to be polite. Sigrun nodded.

"I know this places you in a difficult position, Keeper." Sigrun said quietly. "I feel my Calling coming at long last. I cannot stay. If I could, I would. But..."

"It hasn't been that long." The Keeper shook her head. "Has it?"

"Ten years." Sigrun shrugged. "It is different for every Warden." She shook her head. "I have to go while I can. It is my duty. But... She was a good sort. A good soldier by all accounts. The kind we need now that the world has gone nuts."

"Who will seek her?" The Keeper asked after a moment's thought.

"I don't know." Sigrun admitted. "But I found a crossbow bolt of dwarven make where she came up that matches the hole in her armor. I wouldn't put it past her brother to send assassins after her." The Keeper paled but Sigrun was quick to reassure her. "They likely will not know the surface any better than I did. Tend her until she wakes, that is all I ask. She will likely leave as soon as she does."

"I know your kind are tough, Warden Sigrun..." Keeper Renia said with a scowl as she looked to where Reda lay silent and still. "But she will not be able to move for a bit."

"Betcha gold piece?" Sigrun asked with a smirk. The Keeper shook her head and Sigrun nodded. "She will. She knows who hunts her, Keeper. She always was honorable. She won't put your people in danger is she can help it. But you saw her throat."

"I know." The Keeper said sadly. "There is nothing we can do."

"She will never be able to speak again."