A/N: This was my original idea for this story. I wanted to try something more "in depth", but I found it just angered
me every time I sat down to write it. So, screw it. First time writing a fight scene in years, anyway, so, here goes nothing.
And please review if you read...feedback is the juice of my system! :D

Story begins after the collection of all party members (Circle of Magi then Orzammar), where I went up and saved the mages/owned Uldred and didn't destroy the Anvil, with the female noble storyline (Elissa Cousland), warrior. Oh, and Behlin died. I hate that motherfucker.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Dragon Age or anything by Bioware for that matter. None of these characters, or anything herein, are mine.
This is merely a piece of practice writing, and fanfiction, for the purpose of personal and fan entertainment, as well as further development of my
personal skills.

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Our Cracked Symphony
by R is for Rebel - started June 16th/2011
Site One: Fools Make Good Leaders
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Another day, another horde, another pile of bodies.

Elissa Cousland stood alone on her turn to watch the camp, spinning her two long swords in her hands with ease and lack of care. Her feet spread evenly apart, her back arched in awareness, everything had suddenly come into a clear and crisp perspective. She had even thrown her helmet aside to let her wicked and blood-crazed eyes stare at the enemies she had become all-too familiar within a short span of a couple weeks.

There was nobody here to help her this time, and the thought of a truly life-threatening, one-on-many battle was something that got the adrenaline pumping through her veins. Why wake them, when she could handle it and go steal some of Oghren's ale when kicking Alistair from his slumber for his shift? Elissa had always known she was battle hungry, but since embracing her life as a Grey Warden, she found it in no short supply and she was always ready for another life-or-death situation.

However, if Wynne were to catch her...

With no warning, the three that were before her charged, shields in front of them. She could see the dim glow of others moving behind them, finding herself in the need of a quick plan of action; like every other fool would not, she ran at them. No time to scream, no time to try to ween at their unholy morale, no time to even care. Blades dragging against the dirt beside her, Elissa charged straight at the small shield-wall of darkspawn, and as they rose their weapons to strike, she slammed her one leg completely straight, the other bent, and used her blades to force the shields above her as she skidded underneath them.

The dirt kicked up into her face, but she ignored it as she passed through two of them, hacking hard into the backs of their knees. The continued momentum yanked them out, to which she spun immediately, rising quickly and directly beheading one mid-strike at her back. Blood, bone and tissue sputtered out of it like a ragdoll, the head of the grotesque creature spinning around as it disappeared from her immediate vision. The remaining two of the shield wall tried to spin around, but found themselves impaled from the base of the neck to their pelvic regions before they could do anything. She snorted at the ease of it.

She turned, seeing a darkspawn rise its axe to swing down. It took very little time for Elissa to cover the distance between the two of them. The body of her assailant shot up off the ground as her one blade stabbed through it, a great burst of power straight through the chest, thus with the momentum of the second had its toes barely touching the ground, limbs shaking in dismay whilst futilely grasping at the blades that were now sunk deep into its chest on an upward angle. A hoarse grunt and sputter ushered from its lips, spitting blood all over Elisas's face, and its ghastly yellow eyes slowly rolling to the back of its head, while it attempted to choke out its last moments of life. Without thought, it was thrown off the blades that slew it onto the ground, and Elissa side-stepped with nimbleness, narrowly missing a large hammer that came crashing down soon after the body.

She growled in displeasure as the corpse exploded from the forceful contact, and quite happy she wore all of her armor this day for the splintered bone may have pierced her skin. The sounds were sickening, but the darkspawn wasted no time heaving up its giant hammer, disregarding its comrade that it had just mutilated beyond recognition.

Elissa took no wasted time to shield herself. The darkspawn made way to fully swing the weapon, but it had already found itself with a blade three inches into its throat. It opened its mouth to speak, finding nothing but spittle and heavy blood-flow, before she finished her swing and decapitated it. Standing up straight, her eyes scanned the surroundings, knowing there had to be-

An arrow whizzed by her shoulder, bouncing off her shoulder-plate, and rattled to the grass at her feet. A warden's feelings of an unfinished battle with these freaks was never wrong. Her head spun immediately to the direction it flew from, but as the darkspawn whom had shot it came into view, so did an emissary and another four darkspawn. A flank? When did they get in- another arrow flew toward her, and would have smoked her straight in the forehead if she hadn't swiftly rose her blade and slapped it aside. Well then. That very emissary was in the middle of moving its mouth to form slurred words, waving its mangled staff and free hand around above it. Three of these newly appearing darkspawn charged forward with their shields up covering themselves, and the two archers sat beside the emissary, arrows ready to fly. Oh fuck.

The emissary dropped its staff, pointing it at Elissa with intent. Lightening crackled at its end and shot out with intense speed, crashing hard into her chest; it sent her flying four feet into the air and a couple meters from where she was standing. Arrows whizzed by her as well, one narrowly missing and the other splitting off her outer thigh armour. She let free a cry of pain, but did not let her fall be clumsy, rolling as she hit the ground, swinging back up to standing. She wavered, now, but the other darkspawn were upon her; there was no time to cry about little magic wounds.

Elissa flipped one of her blades so that the blade headed behind her instead of in front, using her second to swiftly deflect an axe coming at her. She body-checked the shield farthest to the right, knocking the beast down at the cost of a hard crunch of armour into her shoulderblade, and used the opening in the wall to thrust her one blade hard into the side of another darkspawn. On the pullout, arrows once again whizzed by her head, catching some of her hair this time.

The be-damned emissary was already chanting up something else, but she had no time to pay attention to the damn thing. She swiftly swung her one sword with extreme haste down toward the third shielded darkspawn's skull. It blocked it with its overly large shield, the loud clang of metal rattling her ears, but she swiftly took her second and rammed it up just underneath its rib cage, only satisfied when popping out between a gap in its armour. She jumped off the darkspawn's now crumbling body to narrowly dodge another jolt of lightening shot from the emissary, feeling the power crackle at the soles of her feet.

She landed, quite gracefully, on the shoulders of the darkspawn whom was just getting up from her forcing down, and thrust her blade down its neck. Upon standing up from its falling body, her panting heavy and her armour suddenly feeling very overbearing, an arrow found its mark deep in her shoulder and the other split off the crunched shoulder-guard. The two of them had thrown aside their bows and taken up their daggers, now at her front and jabbing them toward her. She gave them no satisfaction of her pain, breaking off the bit of arrow that hadn't in-lodged itself into her skin, and smacked aside the first one's charge with ease.

Elissa spun, narrowly missing the second's blade; it fell forward from the force, having not expected to miss, thus she stabbed her own blade through its back, her vision slowly growing into a cloudy nothingness of red. Lightening crackled and hissed as she swiftly sunk both her blades into the second-last darkspawn's chest as it gave forth a hideous, gut-wrenching roar.

She should have seen the noise as a diversion, having been a moron and having used both her blades. She knew there wouldn't be enough time to grab them without being hit, perhaps too proud to leave the be-damned things in the disgusting creature, but it didn't matter when the same forceful lightening crashed into her chest and threw her twice the distance of last time. She crashed hard into one of the oaks. Elissa broke it as best she could with her shoulder, feeling the bones splintering and breaking as she made contact. She screamed then, hitting the ground as equally hard and growling as the pain shot throughout her entire body. Her breathing was immediately rugged, pushing up difficult. Her arm wavered and hissed, stinging with incomparable pain as she forced her arm to still work. It had to function, it had to move, this was no time to die...

She could barely see straight she was so disoriented, but blinked hard as she stared at what lights she could distinguish.

A dagger found its mark on her shoulder, burying itself deep, with the hollow eyes of a darkspawn coming into view. Its vulgar breath, rotting skin, and bug-infested teeth all hovered over her, making her wretch in disgust. She must have mis-counted. Elissa threw up her elbow, hitting it hard in the chin, and ripped the dagger out herself, choosing a much better mark than the darkspawn who had wanted her for a meal; its throat. As she stood, she could feel herself wobble, but paid it no heed. There was no time. She had two more to deal with, and only one blade to do it with. Another green ball whizzed past her head as she stepped over the dying, squirming darkspawn. Another axe whirled down in front of her face, barely missing the tip of her foot, and her right hand shot-forward, grabbing the darkspawn by the head. Her mangled arm threw itself, blade loosely in hand, at it, the blade only sinking half-way through its neck before she could no longer muster the strength to finish the blow.

Luckily, the thing dropped and the blade easily whittled itself out, deflecting another whirling ball of light. She had lost track of how many of them had actually flown by at this point in time, not knowing if she had been hit by many or dodged most of them.

She took no time to think about it. Elissa knew better than to give the emissary a third shot at rendering her nearly useless with its magic, and dashed to the right, dodging another. Focus, focus... She couldn't even distinguish where the damn thing was, only being able to see the small green lights that whizzed toward her, dodging them only because she knew letting them hit her couldn't be a good idea.

Closer, closer... upon approaching far enough, Elissa kicked off the ground and leaped as high as she could into the air, throwing her entire body weight on top of the darkspawn mage and drilling it in the throat with her elbow. The lightening crackled from its staff, hitting her directly in the chest from the tip of the staff, but she grabbed on to its shoulder with her good hand, finding herself thrown to the side. The two of them crashed onto the ground, rolling in slight, and she ended on top, giving it no chance to do any more of its blasted magics on her. Not knowing where her blade had gone, she used her mangled arm to begin feeding fists into its face, setting free multiple crackles of pain. The sound was enough to curdle a mans blood.

She didn't stop as blood began to spit in multiple directions. Elissa had not been one to carry a dagger or an extra weapon, and all she had was her gauntlet fist to make sure it didn't get back rose as it began twitching and gargling, its hands limply at its side. She could have sworn it had been trying to defend itself during her brutal assault and kicked the staff away from it, breathing hard. But if that was true, she couldn't remember a damn part of it.

Another day, another horde, another pile of bodies.

She had no energy to move them away from the camp, or even bury the remnants of her demonic foes. She found herself falling down onto her buttox, her weak fingers of her remaining good arm touching at the charred flesh that was her stomach. The metal had been shattered away from the blow, and blackened blood covered her gauntlet, her eyes mesmerized by the power and force of the magic she had taken directly to the stomach. I'm too...fucking tired, she grumbled in her mind, rubbing her temples in dismay. Elissa had seen this type of magic before, but never tried living through a very direct blow. It probably wasn't a very good idea.

Her breathing was sharp and grieved. From the sounds of battle, both from her cries of pain and the bewitching noise that she had ushered from the emissary, she knew her comrades would be coming to see what trouble she had gotten herself into this time. It was no news to them, although with proper inspection of her right arm, it was no pretty sight. The shoulder-guard had completely crushed itself into her shoulder, which bled profusely and all of the bone inside of it was shattered. Pieces of the metal stuck into her skin and had ripped apart the chain-mail that loosely hung off her. She could feel what felt like splinters in her arm, and two half-broken arrows stuck out of her, one just beside her mangled shoulder and the other directly in the same arm, just above her elbow. Blood dripped from the gauntlet that covered her hand, probably holding a few broken bones of its own within the knuckles and palm.

Just breathe...just breathe. She took a few sharp, quick breaths in before trying to steady it out. Upon leaning back on what she thought would be her left arm, she ran into a pair of cold legs, and sighed.

"Take my eyes off you for one minute and you're off pulling stunts again," Alistair growled as he leaned down, standing above her and looking down. Elissa didn't bother looking up, but instead used his legs as a a gift from the Maker and put her left hand over her bleeding stomach. "This time it's even given you a new haircut. You've singed half it- by the Maker, are you bleeding?"

"I'm okay Alistair. It was just a few darkspawn, nothing I can't handle," she spat in rebuttal, but her voice was as weak as the rest of her body. "Is it your time for the watch already?"

"Well, at first, I thought 'Oh, it looks like a storm is starting', and then part of the forest blew up," he coyly replied, gesturing to couple of splintered trees Elissa had not earlier noticed. He was on his knees beside her now, using one of his hands to hold her up. "Is that death you're wearing? You're really hurt this time..." His eyes darkened. He knew he was inspecting her injuries, regardless of how he was not their ever-dutiful healer who would be more than stern with her for this sort of 'adventure'.

The support suddenly began to steadily disappear, and she found herself lying down, staring at the night sky above her. She had earlier been gazing at this same sky, but found it much more entrancing now; it looked like the stars themselves were dancing for her. The sound of his gauntlets hitting the ground beside her was the only temporary disturbance she found, as the pain of whatever he was doing did not reach her. "Nothing a little bit of Wynne's wonders can't fix in a jiffy," Elissa laughed out. "Just a little flesh wound to worry about."

"There is plenty to worry about!" Alistair growled, his face suddenly taking away her vision of the night sky. This alone made her frown in displeasure; his brow was furrowed deeply with his eyes set in a cold stare-down with her. She felt defeated in this gaze, and just responded with a weak pouty face. Taking her own situation seriously was not something Elissa was well-known for. "There's only two of us left, Elissa! Have you even thought of what would happen if you died? There's more shame in dying with an inflated head than with your comrades."

"You'd be left alone to lead our band of misfits and deal with the archdemon yourself," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. Suddenly she felt quite tired, the remaining strength in her body seeming to fade away. She had no effort left in her to match his stare. "We had this discussion before, remember? And my headaches would end. Sounds like a pleasant win-win for me."

Alistair's mouth cracked ajar, hanging loosely for a moment, but by the time he had snapped it closed, he was pushing her hand away from the wound on her stomach whilst unclasping her shoulder-plate on her broken shoulder. Peeling it off woke her up alright, biting down screams of pain from metal being forcefully, somewhat angrily, pulled out of her mangled shoulder and arm. He furrowed his brow and frowned, reaching for his poultice pack. "Aren't we friends? Why can't you just suddenly scream, 'Oh mighty Alistair, come and save me!' once and a while? Maybe my ego needs a touch-up."

Elissa smiled wickedly, and shook her head in dismay. The pain had woken her, pushing off the sleep that had wanted to claim her, maybe even the death. As he began to methodically un-do the buckles and wrestle off the rest of her chest armor, he seemed so... "What about my ego? What am I to say to Oghren when I needed a buffoon like you to come save me?" she replied, mockery laced all throughout her tone of voice. She knew, full well, that if he hadn't come to check it out...if he hadn't been awake...

"Oh I so didn't deserve that one," Alistair pouted, throwing aside the plates, and began tending to the deep wound. She wished she could have seen the face her made upon examining the thoroughness of the damage and break, but her eyes had shut themselves quite tightly from his poking at it. "Your shoulder, its...well, it's practically gone."

"I don't like magic," Elissa grumbled lowly, keeping her face turned to the opposite direction. She didn't want to watch the lout tend to her wounds, let alone criticize what he might have viewed as carelessness. In the eyes of the disapproving Alistair, she found herself one easy to crumble, even when she kept her pride in tact before Wynne, whom was much more of a fierce and direct lecturing beast, Maker bless her soul, and Sten. Damn quinari.

Alistair seemed equally disapproving as he moved down to her stomach, being able to do a little more for this kind of thing himself. He put his bare palm across it, his skin cold against the magically charred skin that had become her stomach, and his hand lit up in a blue light, cooling it immediately. She wasn't very sure as to what he had just done, but found herself in no position to ask questions.

"I've stopped most of the bleeding, but I need to get you back to Wynne," Alistair analyzed, using his free hand to turn her chin to, once again, stare back at him. ""Your backs as black as the Quinari, I want you to listen to me this time."

"Oh, Maker no, you`re not going to try to carry me back to camp are you?" Elissa asked with a quiver in her voice, her eyes widening at the embarrassing prospect of having the village idiot carrying her back to her comrades. What a commander she is. "You must be kidding me, Alistair. No, no, and-"

Alistair put one arm across her shoulders and the other just at the bottom of her tailbone and rose, throwing Elissa into the suddenly very awkward position of being carried by a Templar. She hadn't even finished her sentence before he had leaped into action, her body stinging with agony with each step her took. She seethed as he gave a coy grin. "Maybe this will teach you a lesson or two, get you to stop fighting on your own. You can rely on us, or at least, you can on me."

"I don't trust easily. Have you seen our band of misfits? We've got a bisexual assassin, an alcoholic dwarf, a runaway dwarf with his mentally challenged kid, a half-dead old lady, a crazy apostate-"

"I can't trust you to Morrigan. One minute it's 'I like you', then, zap! Frog time." Elissa immediately burst out laughing, holding her side and letting her head fall against his chest as she shook with it. It was painful, but, took her mind off what she was about to get in to.

"You...and your fear of frogs."

"I don't doubt she's tried it once or twice already! Something about my cooking...last night, she even tried to kill me with a Ward of Repulsion in front of my tent! It sent me half-way across the camp when I tried to get in the damn thing."

Elissa rose her hand to his mouth as she muffled down her laughs, twinging in pain, but the camp fire light was already coming into view, along with a rightly pissed-off silver haired mage...and god forbid she laughed in front of that Fade demon once she got any closer.