Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews and the huge wave of alerts and favorites for this story! I'm so happy that you all are enjoying it enough to do so - you readers are wonderful! :)

I would say enjoy this update, but it's actually quite depressing, so... Hum. Sorry for the sadness in advance!

Also, as a random side note, I try to liken each nation of Ferelden to a real world medieval country; for example, I see Ferelden as Britain, Antiva as Spain (even though I've heard it's based on Italy, I think Spain fits better, and anyways you hear Antivans using Spanish words sometimes, so nyah ;) ), and Orlais as France. And I see Nevarra as Italy or Prussia (two very different nations, I know, but bear with me), so when there is Nevarran spoken in this chapter, imagine it as Italian ;)

Cullen speaking Italian... Now there's a sexy thought ;D


For the first night on the road, after having travelled a few miles in the daylight that remained after Toriana's horseback riding lesson (it was rather slow going because she was still very uncomfortable on top of a horse), the Wardens did not wear armor to sleep. Now that the darkspawn were no longer a problem, Toriana thought that being attacked in the night wouldn't be an issue, for surely humans would not attack a fully armed group of Grey Wardens; and so they erred on the side of comfort, stretching out under the leaves of trees with their armor stacked nearby.

She sat keeping first watch while the others lay sleeping on their bedrolls, their faces cast into shadows by the small fire in the center of camp that was by the late hour more embers than flame. To keep her mind off of her dark thoughts, her memories of a sick young Templar and a noble Warden, she studied her sleeping companions. In sleep Moiraine looked like a child, hand curled under her chin and mouth slightly open. Carver and Mekel had their backs to her. Cullen was frowning in his sleep and muttering something, and though she wanted to run her hand over his forehead to sooth his unrest, she kept herself from doing so. They were familiar enough with each other as it was, they did not need more closeness – it would only lead to disaster.

They were encased on every side by trees now, having reached the Planasene Forest, and all about them was darkness. The horses were sleeping tied to some trees at the edge of the camp, but suddenly Aethelstan – such Cullen had named his bad-tempered black stallion, saying it meant 'noble,' to which Tori had snorted incredulously – lifted his head and let out a low whicker as he looked to the trees.

Toriana stiffened, lifting her staff from her lap and drawing her magic into her to be ready to fight whatever may have startled the horse. She knew there were wolves and bears in the forest, and with the fire slowly dying down they were likely considering prowling into the camp to snack on the horses.

But what broke through the trees all around them were not animals, but humans. Hollering a battle-cry in a language she did not understand, a group of near fifteen men tore into their camp with weapons drawn. She was on her feet in an instant, staff spreading out in an arc in front of her to guide the Cone of Cold, a deadly arc of icicle spikes that impaled three of the men before the others gathered themselves enough to go around.

Now there were frenzied, half terrified cries of some word that Toriana was guessing meant 'mage,' and all of them turned to lunge for her rather than dealing with her rapidly waking companions. Which was a mistake on the attackers' part, because as she dodged some blows and blocked others with her staff, throwing a head-sized fireball at one of the men, the other Wardens quickly dispatched the rest of them.

Toriana's pulse was racing as she stood surrounded by bodies, and Moiraine sent her a questioning frown, "Who were they?"

The Warden-Commander shook her head, "I don't know. Bandits, is my guess, but we should search the bodies." They had certainly been unorganized enough to be simple bandits, and hadn't had much in the way of fighting skills – not compared to the Wardens, at least – but it never hurt to be careful.

As Cullen went to calm the shrieking, stomping horses, the other Wardens began to go from body to body, looking for anything they could use or any hint that the men were more than bandits. Besides some dried food, Toriana didn't find anything of interest and was relieved.

"Commander… This one's still alive." Moiraine's voice was a soft, uneasy one from where she crouched over one of the men.

It was the man Tori had hit with the fireball; apparently her aim had been just a bit off. The fire had heated his armor to a dangerous level, burning through his clothes beneath and melting his skin to the inside of his breastplate. Apparently some of the flames had caught in facial hair of some sort, because the bottom half of his face was burned and mottled beyond recognition. It was a horribly painful thing, but not enough to kill him outright – a slow, painful death awaited him.

He was jerking and twitching on the ground, hands trying to pull at his breastplate but finding it too hot to touch, and now that the horses were no longer making much noise she could hear the agonized moans escaping his charred lips. When she felt guilt and horror begin to creep inside her veins, Toriana quickly pulled on her Commander mask and frowned calmly down at the man, trying to think of how she might save him.

The rest of the Wardens were standing around watching, now, but she put them from her mind as she put her hands inches above the steaming armor and sent out tendrils of healing magic into the man, simultaneously easing some of the pain from his mind and searching out all of the damage, looking to see if there was anything she could salvage. She pulled the heat from the armor with just a touch of ice, and started to repair the man one little bit at a time.

Thankfully none of the others spoke, leaving her in total concentration. By the time ten minutes had passed, Toriana had fixed the burns on his face, leaving behind only moderate scars, and had done what she could for the rest of him. But his skin remained melded to his armor, and now more than ever she wished Wynne were here. Wynne would know how to fix this…

"I can't separate his skin from his armor," Toriana sighed, wiping a weary hand across her sweaty brow and staring at the man, who was now panting shallow breaths and looking wildly at them all as if he expected them to attack him at any moment. From here, even with the burns, she could tell he was very young – no older than twenty, she would guess – and had been handsome before this disaster. Thick black hair was kept only a bit shorter than Cullen's, and his eyes were beautifully almond-shaped and a light brown, striking above his high cheekbones. He looked horribly underfed, however, judging by his gaunt look and thin arms.

The man started babbling in that same foreign language and Toriana shook her head at him helplessly, not understanding. "Is that Nevarran? I have no idea what he's saying."

"Something involving magic," Cullen interjected from where he was standing opposite Tori, brow furrowed as he looked down at the injured man. "I learned Nevarran when I came to Kirkwall, but he's talking too fast, I can't…" He said something clumsily in Nevarran and the man stopped, tilting his head to look at Cullen before he spoke again, this time slower.

Cullen listened, his face darkening with every word, and when Toriana gave him a questioning look he translated. "He says… he begs us to have mercy, says that they should have never attacked a… a witch?" this warrants a frown from him before he continues, "A user of evil magic, that's what it means, the closest translation we have is 'witch,' or..." His glance at Tori was slightly apologetic and she waved at him to continue, uncaring if the man thought she was a blood mage.

"He's saying something about food, about… starving. My Nevarran is not exactly in top shape… I think he's saying that they were starving, he mentions a child—not his child, his brother's, I think. The child is hungry—"

"And they attacked us in the hopes of getting food for the starving child?" Toriana interjects incredulously. She could count on both hands how many times she had heard that story from captured attackers, and she would run out of fingers. "What a touching story," she says in a wry voice, giving the man a disbelieving look, "You can tell him he doesn't need to make up awful lies like that, I don't intend on killing him after making the effort to keep him alive."

Cullen frowns more, his eyes troubled, and doesn't translate her words. "I don't know… You don't think he could be telling the truth? These men do look a bit…"

"Starved," Moiraine fills in, her green eyes just as troubled.

There's a moment of solemn silence, broken by the man's sudden cry of despair. He rolled onto his belly and crawled over to one of the dead men, his noises of pain as the breastplate tore his skin nothing compared to the heart-wrenching sob that left his throat. The dead man was on his back, gaping hole in his chest, staring sightlessly up into the dark sky with light brown almond-shaped eyes, his thick black hair pulled back into a ponytail and his high cheekbones making his sunken cheeks even more pronounced. As the injured man ignored his pain and pulled the dead one that looked so much like him into his arms, crying openly and rocking back and forth, the weight of his grief so heavy that he gave no notice of the Wardens, Toriana realized with a drop of her heart that the man's story was true. That was his brother.

The other Wardens looked varying levels of sick or horrified as they came to the same realization. The silence in the camp was only filled by the man's agonized sobs, his cries of what Tori assumed was his brother's name. Beneath her Commander mask, she was horrified. She knew they had attacked first, that the Wardens had only been defending themselves, but still the guilt at knowing that they had killed starving men desperately trying to feed their families was crushing.

Toriana kept her mask about her, though, and took a step towards the man, glancing at Cullen, "I need you to explain to him that I cannot separate his breastplate from his skin, and he needs to be very careful not to tear it off or he could die." She can hear her voice, unfeeling and distant, such a harsh contrast to how she feels inside, but she finds solace in it. She is the Warden-Commander; she's killed hundreds of men before. Knowing the story of two of them does not make a difference. Should not.

Cullen speaks to the man, his voice low and concerned, in his heavily Fereldan-accented Nevarran. There's a moment where the man is silent save for his now mostly quiet, body-wracking sobs, and she wonders if he even heard Cullen's words.

Then he lifted his head and turned to look at Toriana with a burning hatred twisting his scarred face, and there was no warning before he was clambering painfully to his feet and drawing a dagger from his belt, lunging at her with clear intent to slit her throat. There was a suspended moment where Tori froze, her magic bubbling at her fingertips, and was unable to cast a spell to stop the man. She imagined him before she had burned him, smiling and holding his brother's child in his arms, and she couldn't attack him again. Her self-preservation instincts – her Commander side – screamed at her to stop him, but that vulnerable, utterly Toriana side of her couldn't. She just couldn't.

Cullen saw the Nevarran lurch to his feet, he saw the obvious pain in the way his arms trembled violently and his forehead creased, and he saw the blackness in the man's eyes that he knew all too well: hatred. When the man pulled out a dagger that they had foolishly not taken from him and charged at Toriana, Cullen felt a clawing in his chest, telling him to protect her. Without a thought his sword was in his hand and he held it out across the man's path.

The man stopped, but did not give up as Cullen had hoped; he shifted his grip on his dagger and threw it at Toriana with a skewed accuracy because of his injury. The man barely had the time to let out a shout of triumph as the blade sunk into her shoulder before Cullen's sword was through his chest.

As the Nevarran dropped to the ground with one last sigh before death, Toriana looked down at the hilt sticking out of her shoulder numbly. Cullen dropped his bloody sword and was at her side in an instant, followed by Moiraine, and she pulled the Warden-Commander mask back on to cover her inner turmoil, her guilt and horror and sorrow. "I'm fine," she growled, wrapping her hand around the hilt and wrenching it out, managing to bite her lip as she fought back a curse of pain.

Cullen gives her a look that says he doesn't think she's fine, but she ignores it and puts a glowing hand over the rapidly bleeding wound, letting her own magic pour through her and knit parted flesh back together. Moiraine frets around her, asking if she'll need any herbs to help with blood loss, or perhaps some tea to calm her? Toriana shakes her head and waves her off, "I'm fine," she repeats, more firmly. But she's not fine.

She can't get the image of the Nevarran man, holding his brother and sobbing with all the grief in the world, out of her head. Even as she straightens and tells her fellow Wardens to gather the bodies on the fire to burn them, she knows it's an image that will haunt her forever.

The people she kills stay with her always.


Next update will be within a week. I'm returning to America on Tuesday, so I'll be very busy and won't be able to update until after I get home and settle in again.