Author Note: The Maker hates city elves it seems. When we last saw Kallian, she was getting married and then...
Kallian awakes to the pounding in her skull and the worried face of her red-headed cousin.
The Maker must hate her or something for her to be even more hung over than her cousin.
"Oh good you're all right!" Shianni gasps in relief, pulling her into a hug. There is this indistinct sobbing murmur coming from somewhere in the room, a litany of prayer being repeated over and over again, interspersed with quiet sobs.
"Wha-What happened?" Kallian mumbles, as she puts a hand to her aching head. This...wasn't a hangover, as she gingerly touches what is probably an impressive looking bruise on her temple.
The look on Shianni's face is full of 'you don't want to know', but the memory surfaces easily enough and Kallian's hands clench into white-knuckled fists. That human bastard had come in, bold as you please, and utterly ruined her wedding, all for his sick pleasure. Kallian pulls of the crushed ruin that was her crown of flowers and looks regretfully at the tears and smudges on her dress.
"They locked us in here to wait until that... Bastard is," Velora - Soris's bride Kallian reminds herself - shudders at the words to come out of her mouth. Ready for us."
"Well then we need to get out of here," Kallian states the obvious, as she pulls herself up into a crouch.
"Forgive me if I don't hold my breath!" the dark-skinned woman - Kallian can't quite recall her name -snaps. "The door is locked and solid, and we're unarmed!"
That had never stopped Mama, Kallian thinks to herself, a vicious grin spreading across her features as her eyes sweep across the room, searching for anything that can be used as a weapon. Adaia had taught her many important things.
Anything can be used as a weapon girl. You can kill a man with his own shoe if need be, brain him hard enough with it.
But what if he's bigger than me Mama?, Kallian had asked and Adaia had given her that secret smile of hers. The wicked grin that was just for her as she imparted pearls of wisdom to her little girl.
Size don't matter much once your knife's in his belly.
"Look, we'll do what they want, go home, and try to forget this ever happened!" the other women are saying, and Kallian decides on ignoring them all as she finds nothing convenient to use in the room.
She could throw a table at a man, but it would be of little use if there was more than one. Also it was heavy, and not necessarily fatal. Of all days to be without a knife! Her mother would be appalled! Her eyes go to her feet and Adaia's boots on them.
"She's right. It'll be worse if we resist."
Kallian pulls her left boot off of her foot and presses firmly against the wooden heel. If the Tabris girl knew anything about her mother, it was that Adaia was sneaky and the small snap and the small set of lockpicks that pop out of the sole of the boots only reinforces that image of her mother in her.
The other women, except the one praying in the corner stare at her in a mixed array of shock and awe, as she snaps the heel back in place and pulls it back on, before doing the same to the right boot, from which a small knife has been cleverly hidden.
The Maker would piss himself first before Kallian Tabris let a human touch her on her wedding day. Fucking bastards had best try to bed a bear before going after her.
She gives Shianni a wicked smile which her cousin returns. Kallian is quite sure that she can pick the lock on the door. Considering that they are merely a bunch of unarmed elven women, there probably isn't a guard at the door. Provided that the other women can keep their mouths shut and listen to her, they might all get out of here alive and unscathed.
-0-
Unfortunately since the Maker hates elves, one of the other women die and Kallian never gets a chance and her cousin is dragged away kicking and screaming.
"Shianni!" Kallian snarls at the two guards who have been left behind to 'deal with her' restrain her as she fights to go after the sick bastards.
"This one is a scrapper all right," the one on the left laughs. Kallian whirls on the armoured man to snarl in his face, her eyes blazing with rage and pure hatred, as she manages to wrench herself out of their grip, her hands and arm bouncing painfully off of their metal encased bodies, as she puts distance between them and herself. The door and her knife on the other side of the room - with the damn humans in the way.
Had there been only one, Kallian could easily beat his brains out onto the floor, but there are two of them. And while Kallian may not be a stranger to unfair fights, she is usually armed with more than a set of lockpicks.
"Uh... hello?" a familiar nervous stammer draws everyone's attention towards the door. Kallian's jaw drops open in shock at the sight of Soris, with a sword in hand.
The two soldiers laugh at the sight of the incredibly nervous-looking elf in the doorway.
"A little elfling with a stolen sword!" they laugh advancing on her cousin.
"Soris, run!" Kallian shouts at him. Because Soris, Maker bless his heart, is not a fighter. Soris is not brave and reckless and fierce like Kallian is. Adaia had tried to teach her nephew, but he did not have the same spark Kallian did.
While Soris may not be the bravest of the alienage, he was rather clever and wisely slid the sword across the floor to Kallian, the one out of the two of them who was probably capable of using it. She snaps it up off the floor as she charges forward towards the two distracted soldiers.
"Oh, sod." Are the first soldier's last wods as Kallian rams the blade straight through the gap in his armour into his belly. It is a rare thing for a house guard to wear his armour properly, her mother had taught her. Most dispense with their heavy mail, preferring to wear plain clothes beneath the plate. The arl's men are no different she is happy to discover as she withdraws the blade, soaked in blood. She looks up and sees Soris with a crossbow - a crossbow of all things!- in his hands and he has just shot the second man in the throat.
"Andraste's ass! Where did you get that?!" Kallian exclaims as her cousin pulls the arrow out of the dead human's throat with trembling hands, getting blood all over his wedding clothes.
"Grey...Warden," Soris pants out, the pallor of his face brought out quite clearly by the red blood splashed across his face, as Kallian listens to his story while looting the dead soldiers bodies for coin, keys and anything else she can find a use for. "Duncan. He gave us his sword and crossbow, but that's all we have."
"Us?"
"Nelaros. Your betrothed."
"I know who he is!" Kallian snaps at him, motioning for him to get a move on it. They have Shianni to save.
"He's the reason why we're here. He lost it on those who wanted to 'hope for the best'. I..." her cousin falters a little on those words, sounding almost ashamed of himself. "I didn't know what to do."
"You came," Kallian tells him, taking a brief moment to give her cousin a hug. "That's what matters."
Soris has never been a leader. Most would accuse him of cowardice. Kallian called it alienage sense and basic decency. It was a miracle in and of itself that Soris was not a bitter and angry drunken wreck. But could one expect feats of reckless daring-do from a boy who had lost both of his parents to humans and watched them hang the strongest woman the Denerim alienage had ever had the privilege of seeing at a young age?
A warm and fuzzy feeling has settled in her stomach despite the fact that the two of them are fighting their way through the arl's kitchen. Her cousin and her betrothed had come for them. Nelaros had come for her. If she wasn't already in love with him, this would be the deciding point. She's already decided that the moment they reach her husband - never mind that the ceremony was never completed - she was going to throw herself into his arms and snog the man senseless. Right after they rescued Shianni, of course.
But because the Maker really hated elves, or maybe just hated Kallian Tabris, that plan fell through quite rapidly.
Just as she kicked down the door towards the hall where Nelaros was waiting for them, the first sight to greet her was that of Nelaros' blood arcing up in a spray as one of the arls' men cut him down.
"NO!" she screams, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.
"See? I told you, there'd be more. Elves run in packs, like rodents."
Kallian grips the sword in her hand in a white-knuckled death grip. Maker burn them all. She curses silently. Had they not stolen enough already? Their homes, their heritage, her aunt and uncle, her mother. And now they take away her husband - the ceremony hadn't ended but it was a marriage, right? - chance at a happy future?
Kallian moves in a white-wedding dress and blue flower adorned blur, and there is one less human bastard in the world, a lockpick jammed through his throat, and she knocks him down to the floor.
She brings up her sword to block a blow from the guard captain - who had much better reflexes than the other son-of-a-bitch with a crossbow bolt in the knee.
"You knife-eared bitch!" the guard snarls in her face, the shock of being blocked by an elf - and a woman at that evident on his face.
"I'll show you a knife!" she snarls right back at him, before suddenly ducking out of the stalemate they had had to slip beneath his stance and stab him in the eye with a knife.
Instinctively the man lets go of his blade as he screams, his gauntleted hands reaching for the knife handle, but Kallian does not let him, as she pulls the handle out of his reach by dragging it through his face.
She follows the now dead man to the floor, ramming her knife into the ruin that is his face over and over and over again.
"Kallian, oh Kallian..." Soris is pulling her off of the corpse and wrapping her in the biggest hug he can manage. "I'm so sorry." he says and Kallian's not sure if he's apologizing to her or to Nelaros.
"We need to keep moving," she says as she shrugs her cousin's embrace off, moving to kneel by Nelaros' corpse. "He died to save me. Let's not let it be in vain." she mumbles, brushing her dead husband's face.
A ring lies on the floor near him and Kallian realizes, with a small sob that it is a wedding ring. Her wedding ring - or it was to be. Her father had told her that her betrothed had made the wedding bands himself. She slips the thin silver band onto her finger.
"Vaughan dies," she whispers as they leave a blood soaked trail through the castle. "The Void can take the consequences."
She only hopes that they can save Shianni.
-0-
It is official, Kallian learns as she and Soris burst into the Arl's son's rooms. The Maker despised elves and Kallian Tabris. Had it been written somewhere, in stone or lyrium or upon the heavens themselves that nothing Kallian loved could remain safe and whole?
Shianni is lying on the floor, her few clothes torn to shreds, her naked body bruised and bleeding, sobbing and whimpering as a human bastard pleasures himself between her legs. Another human and that whoreson Vaughan, lounging on a chair, his shirt and trousers in disarray, a goblet of wine in hand, watching.
"My, my what have we here?" he drawls.
"Get your filthy hands off of her!" Kallian screams at the man raping her cousin, and a knife takes him right in the neck, severing a sprayer, and the blood mists out across the stone floor and Shianni.
"All right, let's not be too hasty here. Surely we can talk this over..." he says getting up from his seat to approach her.
A hastily thrown blade him square in the eye.
"Take another step human, and I guarantee it shall be your last." Kallian snarls, pointing at him threateningly.
"You kill me, and your pigsty alienage will burn." Vaughan shrieks at her, as his last guard moves to attack. Soris is, however faster and dispatches the man with three crossbow bolts to the chest.
"My friends are dead and my life is in tatters because of you," Kallian informs the Arl's son planting a boot firmly on the man's chest as she draws a second knife, which she tests gently against her own hand. "I have nothing left to lose." She tells him looking the man straight in the eye, and there is none of the soft-heartedness that Kallian's family and alienage knows in her expression.
"But you still possess your other eye."
-0-
"You've returned!" Elder Valendrian looks the closest he's ever been to tears as he rushes them at the gate. The Grey Warden is there too, for some reason.
"Has Shianni been hurt? Where is Tormey's daughter, Nola?" he demands taking in all of their faces at once. The blood and tears are evident enough of what has happened, Kallian thinks.
"Nola," Velora whimpers. "Nola didn't make it. She resisted and..."
"They killed her..." Shianni gets out in a whisper, shivering where she stands, wrapped in clothes they looted from the servants' quarters.
"Nelaros too," Soris tells the elder. "The guards killed him."
"I see..." the elder sighs, suddenly looking so very, very old. "Would you please take Shianni home? She needs rest." He asks Velora, who complies, Kallian is about to follow after them, to be sure that her cousin is as all right as she can be, given the circumstances. But the Elder motions for her to stay.
"Now tell me, what happened?"
Kallian glances at the blood stains beneath her nails before looking straight into the Elder's face as she answers, almost proudly:
"Vaughan's dead."
"Then the garrison could already be on their way. You have little time." Duncan remarks, his expression sombre.
"We need to get out of Denerim," Kallian mumbles - she needs to keep the humans away from the alienage and her family. She does not regret what she did to Vaughan - not one bit - but the consequences...
"The guards are here!" a panicked shout brings Kallian once more to the conclusion that yes, the Maker did indeed hate her.
-0-
"It was me." Kallian Tabris declares proudly as she steps forward, sending silent, mental apologies to her dear Papa. He'd have to watch them hang his daughter too now. Soris had better take care of him once she was gone.
"You expect me to believe one woman did all of that?"
Kallain is just about to offer the old guard captain a personal demonstration when Valendrian interjects with a:
"We are not all so helpless, Captain."
The guard captain looks at her with - is that respect in his eyes? - she must be seeing things, as he speaks.
"You save many by coming forward. I don't envy your fate, but I applaud your courage." He turns to the gathering congregation of elves who have no doubt heard the news by now. "This elf will wait in the dungeons until the arl returns. The rest of you, back to your houses!"
"Captain, a word if you please." Duncan says, inserting himself into the man's space easily.
"What is it, Grey Warden? The situation is well under control as you can see."
The look on the man's face is just a tad mischievous in Kallian's opinion as the dark-skinned man speaks.
"Be that as it may. I hereby invoke the Right of Conscription. I remove this woman into my custody."
"What?!" Kallian, Soris and many of those surrounding them exclaim.
"Son of a tied down- Very well Grey Warden; I cannot challenge your right, but I'll ask you one thing: Get this elf out of the city. Today."
"Agreed."
"Now, I need to get my men on the streets before the news hits. Move out!"
And just like that the city guard leave.
"Say your goodbyes, we leave immediately." the Warden tells her as a very odd looking group of people approach the alienage. Two dwarves, one the angry-woman from this morning and the other an unfamiliar looking blonde- dwarf with a rather magnificent looking beard, a tired-looking dark-haired human man and the girl Surana. They are all dressed in an eclectic mix of plate and leather armour varying in quality and wear.
"Another one?" the male dwarf remarks a smile on his face as he neared. "Do you have a thing for saving people from death sentences, Warden?"
"Did the party end already? Or did the guards put a stop to it because you were too happy? Templars are nasty like that. I mean just because you've never seen a girl before in your life and you're miserable doesn't mean you have to make everyone else miserable too. You know, I bet Daylen was right and the templars really are all just jealous and-"
"Shut up, Surana."
Kallian ignores the other Wardens bickering and conversation to turn to her family which has all assembled at the gates, her father and Shianni too.
She hugs the living daylights out of her father.
"Be safe," he tells her. "I'll miss you."
"You're amazing, you know that?" Shianni tells her, wrapping her in a hug. "I love you cousin, make us proud out there."
"You know," Soris says, tears in his eyes, like the crybaby he's always been. "You've been my hero since we were kids. It's just official, now."
Kallian cannot stop the tears from flowing as her family hugs her for what may be very well the last time.
This is her family. They need to stick together. They need her there to protect them and Maker damn those humans for forcing her to leave.
"I love you all. Be safe. Promise me that. Please. Don't die. Please..." she tells them, as they release her.
Kallian wipes a hand across her eyes and dries her face with a corner of her ruined wedding dress. When she turns to face the rest of the Grey Wardens, her eyes are dry and her face is hard and unreadable.
She is going to make it back to her family one day. And the Maker had best watch himself if he tries to take them away from her.
Author Note: And that's the end of the City Elf Origin. I'm not exactly 100% happy with how I ended this origin or more specifically the quality of the writing at the end, so perhaps I'll revisit this chapter later and edit it.
Next we travel to the Brecillian Forest where we add yet another elf to our odd group of Warden Recruits. There is a cave and a creepy mirror and everyone knows that it is always a bad idea to... oh Tamlen...