The walls were dripping. It was a steady sound - rhythmic. Anders tried to identify the source but couldn't.

"Watch it, dwarf!"

Fabric shifted against plate, Nathaniel's leather gloves making a squeaking noise just before Oghren's shoulder crashed into the wall. The dwarf chuckled.

"You idiots are lucky we already killed everything down here." Elissa sighed, stalking ahead, scanning the periphery of her senses to be sure. "Everything nearby."

Only Anders was silent.

It was his silence that drew Elissa's focus enough to slow her relentless pace. "What?"

"Hm?" Anders looked up, the whites of his eyes flashing briefly in the dim ambient light produced by the tunnel worms. "Nothing."

Something shifted ahead in the tunnel and he staggered beside her, disturbing the crumbling dirt of the tunnel wall. It bloomed into the air, causing Oghren to swear and cough behind them. This time it was Nathaniel who laughed.

"Don't tell me you're afraid of the dark?"

Again, silence, if you didn't count the renewed bickering between the dwarf and the archer currently falling further behind.

"Anders, you're a mage." Elissa whispered this, leaning in conspiratorially as though it were a secret of which only she was aware. "You can create light in the palm of your hand. This darkness exists only because you allow it."

Anders laughed, softly. Bitterly. He brought a ball of flame to life in his hand. "It's just that easy, isn't it?"

"I certainly can't do that." She said, subtly bumping her shoulder subtly against his. "Well, I could with a flint and some tinder, but it would take me far longer than that just took you, and I have lit many a campfire."

There was another span of silence broken only by the shifting of leather and plate armor, and then he spoke.

"In solitary, it's pitch black. You lose track of time after awhile. Minutes, days, years...everything blends together in the dark." Anders watched the flame in his hand create dim shadows on the wall, subtly smiling as Elissa's curls shifted through the light creating what vaguely resembled a bramble. "Sometimes the Templar wouldn't completely drain us. They'd just leave us there, in the dark, listening to water dripping, someone breathing, the beating of our own hearts."

Elissa said nothing, listening. Even Nathaniel and Oghren had fallen silent.

"They'd stand guard and wait - just wait - for the moment somebody gave in and did exactly that. Then they'd smite us all." The healer finished, finally allowing the flame to go out. Crushing it in his palm. "They only let us have the light to prove they could take it away."

"Light it again." Elissa's command was soft, but left no room for discussion. After a moment Anders did as he was told and pulled the flame back into his hand.

Elissa rifled through her pack and produced a bottle filled with some thick, dark, exceptionally alcoholic concoction which she uncorked and pulled into her mouth. Her fingers wrapped around Anders's wrist, and she leaned forward, then spat a stream through the fire.

The once small flame exploded outward from his hand, spraying along the wall. For a moment the passage lit blindingly bright, and even once the flames had dimmed back to a flicker, the fire it had set to the few pieces of rotting wooden supports embedded in the wall remained.

Elissa pulled one piece of it free and held it up, now using it as a torch. "You're a Warden now Anders. My Warden. The Templar will not touch you. So, if you need a light in the darkness, make it. And if anyone stands in your way?" She shrugged and moved ahead down the passage. "I've got more than enough alcohol to help you burn them all."