Square #18 – Kiss To Save The Day – Merrill/Sigrun
They'd been leery of accepting the blood mage into the Grey Wardens. They already had several mages, which made the Chantry titchy to begin with, the chantry generally preferring that the wardens in any given country limited themselves to only one mage warden at a time. That she was a blood mage, and Dalish... well, that only made it all the more likely that the chantry would have Words To Say about the latest Grey Warden. And after the way things had turned out with the last blood mage they'd accepted... well, they weren't in any particular rush to recruit another.
That in itself might have been enough to spur the Warden-Commander on into offering the joining ritual to the woman. But to top it off she was an old friend of the Warden-Commander's, and knew Bethany as well, and when she showed up on the doorstep of Vigil's Keep in Bethany's company one day, seeking asylum after the horrific events in Kirkwall the week before, it had seemed the easiest solution.
And she'd been willing, even knowing that it was a one-way path, and frequently a lethal one.
Nathaniel had to admit that for all her small size, she pulled her weight and then some. He'd still rather have had Bethany as his mage – in more ways than one – but she'd managed to break an arm while abroad, and bone healed best when it was allowed to heal naturally, so it would be some time yet before she was back on active duty. And in the meantime, he was stuck with the new mage in his group; a mage who was good at dishing out the damage, but lamentably untrained in healing same. Still, they were used to getting by on potions when they had too, and she did make sure that things died faster, which tended to mean less injuries to start with.
He'd begun to think this patrol would, overall, be a routine run through the Wending Woods, with their usual brief stop in at the silverite mine to be sure everything was still fine there. It had been briefly home to darkspawn, after all, and the miners were always reassured by having wardens drop in to check that the place was safe. Only they arrived to find all the miners outside the mine instead of in, and several of them being bandaged, and worst of all, a blanket-covered corpse off to one side.
"What happened?" he demanded of the foreman as soon as his party drew close enough.
"Warden Nathaniel! I'm glad you're here... we cleared a passageway into another set of caves, only to find that there was something still alive in there."
"Darkspawn?" Sigrun asked, moving to stand at Nathaniel's side, hand resting on the axe hanging from her belt.
"Don't know what it is. Big, with long legs... kind of spider-ish, but not."
"How big?" Nathaniel asked worriedly.
"Bigger then three men standing on each other's shoulders," the foreman said. "But its body is tiny, and it can fit through surprisingly small tunnels, as long as they're straight enough for it to get those long legs through; it was crawling out through the new passageway the last we saw of it. Maker only knows where in the mine it is by now."
"All right, we'll go see what we can do," Nathaniel said, and rounded up his wardens.
A long search, a sudden ambush, a hard fight.
"A varterral!" Merrill exclaimed as the creature dropped to the floor in front of them. "Be wary, it has a poisonous sting."
No further words after that, apart from battle cries and the odd word of warning, until the huge creature finally slumped to the floor, seemingly dead.
"It's not really dead," the mage said, walking over to it and setting her pale hand against its dark, smooth chitin. She sounded as if she was about to cry. "They're magical creatures; guardians. As long as what it was created to guard is still here, it will return."
Nathaniel looked at the motionless creature, and then to her. "You've seen them before?"
"Yes," she said hoarsely, and glanced at him, blinking back tears. "And lost friends to them. We must find what it was guarding, and remove it, or it will be back." Her voice broke on the words, and she turned away, shaking visibly now.
Nathaniel frowned, concerned by how upset she was, and took a step forward, then froze as he saw the still-bleeding cut on her wrist, the faint fog of blood still swirling around her. The fight was over; why was she still casting? Or was it her casting; was her demon perhaps getting the better of her?
She dropped to her knees on the floor, hands pressed to her face, and sobbed. The blood cloud thickened.
"Shit," one of the other wardens said faintly, all of them falling back a step as the blood mist thickened and rose in a swirl around her.
Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.
"Merrill? What's wrong?" Sigrun asked, voice warm with concern. She'd made an effort to befriend the mage, as she did all new recruits; she liked having friends.
Merrill shook her head, but otherwise did not respond.
Nathaniel frowned, then signed for his other wardens to retreated, already reaching for his bow again. The wardens took care of their own; including, when necessary, seeing that they had an ending. He'd been among those present when their previous blood mage had turned abomination; he knew what needed to be done.
"Wait," Sigrun said anxiously, putting her hand on his arm, then without waiting for permission hurried forward, ignoring the bloody mist to crouch at the elven girl's side. The swirl bobbled, then redirected itself to flow around her without touching her; some effect of the natural dwarven immunity to magic, perhaps.
Nathaniel frowned, but forbore from drawing his bow as the dwarf talked quietly to the elf, their voices to low to hear. Sigrun slipped an arm around Merrill's shoulder after a while, giving her what looked like a comforting hug, and then kissed her.
The mist dissipated, Merrill's shoulders shaking as she cried in the circle of Sigrun's strong arms. Nathaniel moved off, taking the rest of his wardens with him, to give the pair privacy. She'd be all right now, it looked like. And they'd need to return to the mine entrance and fetch a guide, so they could go explore the newly opened caves and look for whatever the creature had been guarding.