Riona gasped and coughs racked her body, she groaned as she opened her eyes. She had no idea where she was, the last thing she remembered was seeing the signal and firing the trebuchet, she had jumped and then nothing. She blinked her eyes a couple of times and focused on her surroundings. She was buried beneath a pile of rubble and a little bit of snow, it appeared that she was in tunnel, old wood shoring up the sides, perhaps it was an old mine shaft. "Well wherever I am, I can't stay here." She mumbled to herself.
Riona strained against the debris on top of her, using every bit of strength she possessed she managed to shift it enough that she could slide out from under it. She groaned as she got to her feet, her whole body ached. Her left arm especially from where the Elder One, Corypheus, had tried to remove the mark from her hand. She was pretty sure her shoulder was dislocated too seeing as it hung limply at her side. There was no way she'd be able to use her bow like this. That thought made her realize she had lost her bow even if she had been able to use it she was defenseless save the small hunting knife she had strapped to her she, that she used to clean and skin animals. It wasn't much but it would have to do. Riona stepped forward and almost fell on her face, her ankle giving out on her. She groaned as she slid down the wall to her butt, she needed to catalog and deal with her injuries as best she could before moving again. After a quick examine of herself, she determined she had a small gash on her head, a dislocated shoulder, possible broken ribs, a sprained ankle, and numerous cuts and bruises. She also had no potions, no food, no dry clothing, and no way to get a fire going. If she was to survive she had to get out of there and hopefully find the others. In a stroke of luck she did find a mage's staff in the rubble, useless weapon to an archer like herself, but it was the perfect height to use as a walking stick. So with staff in hand, she struggled to her feet and began moving down the tunnel at a limping pace.
Several hours had passed when the tunnel opened up into a larger path with stone walls. Was it possible that she had miraculously stumbled upon the path the others had taken? Judging by the large amount of tracks, a large group had recently been through there, Riona felt herself start to hope as she followed the tracks down a different passage. She followed the passage for a few minutes when it opened up again and right in the middle of the open space was a small rift and a few demons and there was no other way around them. She felt like crying at her bad luck, but she wasn't going down without a fight, even if it was going to be a pathetic excuse of a fight. She stepped forward into the opening, squaring her shoulders in determination as she dropped the staff and drew her knife in a fluid movement. And as the demons moved to attack her, the mark on her hand erupted in painful power as it opened a new rift that pulled the demons into it before disappearing. Riona in shock quickly closed the rift before more demons showed up. After she had it closed she looked at her hand, "What in the creators was that?"
Of course no answer came, not that she actually expected one. Riona dropped her hand and put her knife back in its slot before retrieving the staff. She looked around the open space, four separate passages connected to it, she knew the path she had just been on, so that left three possible paths to choose from. Thanks to the demons, the tracks she had been following had been obliterated. The others could had gone down any of them. She sighed and closed her eyes lifting up a prayer to any god that was listening, and that's when she felt it. A cold breeze and the smell of fresh air coming from the passage leading North. Riona opened her eyes and smiled before moving into the passage, it wasn't long before she stumbled out into the freezing snow, her eyes immediately finding the tracks left behind by the others. She didn't know how far behind she was but she was determined to catch up with them.
Riona walked for hours, each step a struggle. She was freezing, in pain, exhausted, and hungry but she wouldn't stop to rest. She had to keep moving, she had to make it to the others, she had to see Cullen again, had to know he was still alive. She had wanted to tell him back in the Chantry, back before she went to meet certain death, but she couldn't. She couldn't tell him and have him laugh in her face or worse say the words back out of pity knowing she would die and he wouldn't have to deal with her after… yeah that would have been worse, so she hadn't told him. "I wonder if he would have kissed me?" she muttered to herself, "He wouldnt have meant it of course but I bet it would have been nice. At least I would have got to kiss him. And I'm talking to myself, I've officially gone crazy. And I'm still doing it." Riona grinned and laughed at herself despite the dire situation she was in.
After several more hours she came upon a camp fire, it was completely cold. But there where several more scattered in the trees. "Definitely a large group stopped here but was it them or the enemy?" She asked herself. She looked around the abandoned camp looking for anything that could tell her who had stopped there, anything to tell her she was following the right tracks, anything to tell her that her friends were alive, that Cullen was alive. And then there by a tree a red scarf caught her eye, Sera had used the same scarves to lure her to that courtyard when she had joined her group. She practically jogged, well more like hobbled faster, to the Red cloth. Picking it up she discovered it was full of jerky and a water skin, tears sprang to her eyes. They didn't even know she was alive, had no reason to believe it, yet someone held out enough hope that they left her some food. Riona quickly gobbled up the jerky, it wasn't much but it did give her some much needed strength to continue on. After securing the water skin to her belt and warping the scarf about her neck, using it to cover her mouth and nose from the biting wind she continued on.
The sun had fully set and the moon was high in the sky when she finally stopped walking. She knew it was probably foolish to rest with no shelter but it was more dangerous to continue traveling in the dark, in the mountains with hardly anyway to defend herself, to many wild animals. So she set to work making a make do shelter out of branches and with a lot of effort and a good amount of swearing she finally had a very small fire going. The shelter and the fire weren't much but at least it should keep her from freezing to death in her sleep, she just wished she had some dry clothes to put on. Curling up into the tiniest ball possible to retain heat she closed her eyes and dirfted off to sleep praying the nightmares would leave her be. Riona awoke several hours later, her fire nothing more than ashes and the sun about mid way in the sky, she had slept entirely to long. With a groan she got to her feet, with staff in hand, scarf in place, and empty water skin tied to her belt, she continued on her trek through the snow.
An hour maybe two passed when she came across another camp fire, this one was still slightly warm. She had been so close to them last night yet so far away. Glancing around she spotted the remains of the other fires in the tree line, and as before a red scarf caught her eye. This one held more jerky and a set of mismatched gloves. Once the jerky had been scarfed down she tied the scarf around her head, trying to cover her ears, she had long since lost feeling in the tips. And with some difficulty she was able to get the gloves on, they had obviously been made for someone with large fingers as they were way too big for her but she finally got them to stay on. With a grin on her face and a prayer of thanks to whoever held out hope she set out again, she knew she would catch up soon.
But of course she had the worst luck in all of Thedas, she cursed and swore and shouted at the unfairness of it all when a massive blizzard blew in. She couldn't see more than a few inches in front of her face, even if she could see the trail the snow would have covered up the tracks. It was insane to keep walking, but she had no shelter so stopping would be a death sentence. So she kept walking, one foot in front of the other in a straight line, at least she hoped it was, she could be going in circles for all she knew, or headed for a cliff. But she prayed to the creators, to Andraste, to the Maker, to guide her steps. She struggled forward for hours, the temperature steadily dropping, the sky getting darker but the storm seem to be letting up or had she stumbled into a natural shelter from the wind. She raised her weary head to look in front of her, she could see several feet ahead now, and was it just her imagination or was that firelight away in the distance. She struggled to pick up the pace but she was just so cold and so exhausted that she found herself falling to her knees instead, "I'm… sorry...Cullen...I tried." she mumbled as blackness took her as she fell face forward to the snow, completely unaware of the warm arms that caught her just in time