Month after month spent fighting for what remained of her life, and the same thought continued to surface, "Why is there always so much blood?"
Each life was precious amongst the clans. Elves did not wed or mate lightly, and even then, two elves never seemed to have the ease a human couple might in bearing a child. Life in the wilderness had its own difficulties, claiming the lives of children, mothers and elders first when nature demanded sacrifice.
You learned to savor each day and meal when the next one couldn't be seen. You bound each wound and took blood with great care when a stray nick from the wrong vine meant the difference between an easy winter or a month of fever and chills. The people would use their blood to mark themselves, to record a story on their face that any who knew and retold those stories would understand. "Claimed by the Mother, the artist, the warrior, the tree-born," they would say, to those who knew.
Humans spilled so much blood it left her dumbfounded. They kept their brightest minds in servitude, culled their most adept Keepers and seemed to decide life or death on a whim. For the few holding the most coin, there was always another peasant to whip, and another warrior waiting to step up as Captain was slain. Always more ships, more cargo, and more grovelling masses to attend to the details of bringing a lush dinner to their table.
The Cousland villa was no different. Above, the old walls were built strong and thick with stones rounded up from a hundred miles in all directions. Their smoothed, carefully carved surfaces spoke of a fleet of artisans dedicated to their original creation. And now those walls housed a hundred men with itchy sword hands and hearts sore with hate.
They laughed and sang. SANG of slaughtering elves, or drunkards or Antivans and ESPECIALLY Orlesians. Sang as if it was a game to pass the time, to end life after life. Zevran and Wynne's plan to disguise themselves as guards to sneak in was good, but it meant more than an hour spent beneath reeking sweat-soaked platemail, inhaling the stench of the last loathsome occupant as she watched Arl Howe's men with silent contempt.
She couldn't imagine worse than that at the time. Now she could. Now she wished she still couldn't. A lifetime of spiced brandy couldn't wipe the gruesome images from her mind. Men broken on the rack, or sliced open like fresh-felled deer, or left to sit in their own filth for months while the men above laughed and forgot them. Dark hallways patrolled by an even more vile kind of man that didn't laugh at the thought of killing, but the act of it.
And for what? When they had finally tracked the Arl down and forced a confession with a knife through his leg, he screamed of nothing more than hate for elves, hate fo the poor, and hate for the Wardens. His death brought no explanation, no justification for all the effort he and his men had expended to delay their mission. Just a hollow in her chest, to think that so much blood was spilled to stop them for helping. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of deaths, all because a few Fereldans hated the idea that the Orlesians might be right.
"We're not even Orlesian. That daft tit," Alistair muttered. She could tell when he felt the same as her, but it always surprised her the way he bent his sorrow into sarcasm.
I abandoned her. I really am no more than a carrion crow.
When Anora had pretended innocence, and the full force of Loghain's men bore down on them, Kyrnn had called for reason. Ser Cauthrien's men had ambushed them from behind, struck a blow to Kyrnn's head so hard she instantly fell to the floor limp, and nearly caught the rest of them on the spot.
It took a slap in the face from Morrigan and all of Alistair's strength to drag him away from that bloodbath. They fled without Anora, suddenly tetherless. His bowels and belly and lungs tormented him. He bit down the urge to scream murder at any creature that so much as glanced in his direction. Once they finally forced him back to the damnable estate, he paced the corridors relentlessly as the rest of them spoke of strategy, of Riordan's message to them, of anything but avenging Kyrn.
"Useless, god-forsaken, WHORESON!" Zevran shouted in the courtyard, finding himself striking down a lifeless training dummy until there was little left but kindling, bloodied straw and deamp earth all around him.
She was bound to fall too. Just like Rinna. At least your hands are clean this time.
Somewhere in the rage and self loathing, he had not noticed Anora. The Queen had escaped her "valiant rescue" by Loghain's personal guard and made her way back to her uncle's estate. Now she was glaring down at him, once again clothed in lush satin and gold brocade, doused in a perfume so strong it almost wafted away the stench of unwashed platemail.
"I said, she's not dead," Queen Anora repeated, obviously there long enough to see the full depth of his frustration. "They took her to Fort Drakon, for questioning."
"No thanks to you," Zevran spat. "Besides, I've seen EXACTLY what your father's 'questioning' looks like."
"Oh yes," the Queen rolled her eyes and began to pace. "I should have told three dozen of my father's most loyal guard that I was WITH the people he considers enemies of the state. That would have ended well for ALL involved."
He sprang to his feet and rounded on her, pointing a finger at her perfect face to keep himself from running her through with more than words, "if she dies, there will be nowhere you can hide from the deaths I can deal to you."
Anora stood stock still a moment before coughing out a single, perplexed laugh. "Why yes, surely threatening me will get her back. Now that you're done, how about a plan?"
He returned with her and listened, but the vast majority of her plans had nothing to do with rescuing his warden, his lover, his...
No, Kyrn was far down the list of royal chores the Queen had in mind. Her eyes were firmly set on reclaiming her power over the throne, and clear to anyone in the room save Alistair himself, her eyes were also fixed on the only remaining descendant of the Theirin bloodline.
It was astounding to hear the lot of them speak. Now that they had found another Grey Warden, and their lost little queen, it seemed like no one else was willing to risk their neck to bring Kyrn back from Fort Drakon. Wynne seemed concerned, but offered no more than platitudes. "Mahariel is strong. I'm sure she'll pull through this."
"Pull through?" Leliana grimaced, and whispered to him, "she talks as if Fort Drakon is a pleasant chateau."
Morrigan noded to them both, and pulled them aside as the political talk grew louder in the main hall. "You know what you two must do," the witch nodded sagely. "Mahariel is…" With a wistful nod to Zevran, Morrigan smirked, "special. More than that, we cannot afford to lose another Grey Warden at a time like this."
She looked over her shoulder back to Alistair, who stepped towards the doorway they spoke in, but was gently reeled in by his uncle's arm on one side, and Anora's on the other. "Especially when we seem to already be losing one…"
He slapped the palm of his hand against the stonework, and Leliana hissed in a breath in surprise. "I do not CARE about your darkspawn, or your politics, or your damned magics, witch!"
With a huff of disappointment, she glanced to Leliana, who nodded. "Well then," Morrigan began, "I do hope you're better at Wicked Grace than you are with your feelings…"
I didn't ask for this.
Kyrn never wanted to lead the Grey Wardens, or battle a demon, and she certainly never wanted to charge into the heart of the shemlen nobility and ask for her own execution.
She could recall that something had gone wrong after they freed Anora, but the rest was a blur of blood and shouting. She recounted the important details to herself as she took in her surroundings. They had discovered another Grey Warden, Riordan, amongst the prisoners. They had freed a young noble. Rendon Howe was dead. It was all hard to grasp as her head pounded and her ears still rung.
"You took off your helm to face them." Alistair explained, morosely staring out the bars of the cell next to hers. "Ser Coulthrien, remember? Loghain's personal lackey. She came to collect Anora. You tried to reason, and one of her men struck you here," He indicated the base of his skull with a chop of his hand.
"Anora turned on us?" Kyrn stammered. She tried to sit up and crumpled back to the ground as her left hand gave way. Three of the fingers were swollen to twice their size, the bones and tendons so broken she couldn't move it past the wrist.
Alistair chuckled, "The one person in the room trying to keep the peace, and now you're here."
It was hard to focus on him against the throbbing behind her eyes. Perhaps she had just forgotten her own treatment. The blood dried around her temple spoke to some number of traumas, and it wouldn't' have been the first time there was a black void left after a strike to the head. The scent of death was everywhere here, dried into the crannies of the stones. Below them, the floor tiles were wet and raw and full of the stench of terrified men emptying their bowels, piquant with the bitter tinge of a joy for violence.
"This is everything I hate about you humans," Kyrnn growled, finally crawling over to the door of her drafty cage to get a look out at their surroundings.
"I'll take offense to that later," Alistair grimaced, dragging himself to the door next to hers. "Look, high up there."
"Windows too small," She replied, and continued scouring the room down to the stairs that lead to a host of screams coming from below. "I can hear dogs amongst the guards. They'll be worse than the humans."
"Mabari are loyal, even to psychopaths," Alistair spat. "What about taking out one of the guards as they pass?"
"If they don't have a key, we're worse off than now," She growled, and doubled over as a jolt of pain crackled out from from shoulder to temple.
"You're not doing well," Alistair stretched his arm, but couldn't seem to touch her.
"Good thing you don't have a mirror," Kyrn snorted, and then laughed, and then regretted it as she discovered just how many cracked ribs she had.
"No, wait… you're not DOING well!" Alistair repeated twisting his mouth into a smile. "They want us alive. We can use that!"
She shrugged and glanced around her cell for anything at all useful. Were she as dextrous as Leliana she could have picked the lock. Were her hound or wolf not safely inside Eamon's estate, they would have torn the throats of any man that dared imprison her. If Ogrehn's breath didn't dissolve the iron the man could have probably headbutted his way out of the cell. Instead, it was just the two of them, stripped, beaten and useless.
"I mean, I play dead, and you wail and call the guards!" He dropped into a falsetto tone as he stated the charade, "Help, help! Alistair's not breathing! Please! Andraste save him!"
"Why would I call to your goddess?"
"Andraste's not a goddess, I just-" The religious conundrum disrupted his falsetto, and he grasped his hands in the air for thought. "You're right. You're a TERRIBLE actress. It will have to be me, then. HELP!" Alistair began to yell before she could concoct a response.
"No, stop-!" She hissed.
"HELP!" He wailed again, and threw a wink her direction. "Gods, MAKER, HELP HER! She's not BREATHING!"
She threw the blanket half-off herself and hissed back to him, "FINE. FINE. We're doing this. Now what?"
"GUARDS! ANYONE, PLEASE!" He screamed, rattling the bars as best he could manage, before whispering. "Good, sure, maybe… flail a bit?... maybe pull your top off? That'll definitely distract them-"
She shot back a glare, and he returned to his cries for help. A solitary guard responded, striking Alistair's barswith a metal pole and then banging a fist on Kyrn's cell door. "Quiet, knife-ear!" he snarled, "you're lucky Loghain wants you to suffer ALIVE-"
Kyrnn scraped the ground with her good hand, and let out the best wheeze she could dredge up from memories of a winter spent with constant pneumonia. Just past her cracked fingertips, she could see bones peeking out from beneath the loose straw.
"Course if you're just looking for a little attention," the guard sneered, loosening his belt. "I can give you that."
A quick turn of his keys and the door was open. He swung it closed again and trudged forward, slipping his pants to his hips. She grasped the bone, curled around and struck out with what she hoped was the sharp end. The edge chipped against armor but struck him in the inner leg, but nowhere near the manhood she was hoping to eviscerate.
He screamed, knocking her arm aside, launching the bone far outside her reach and then kicking her hard in the ribs.
She tasted blood as she coughed, vision bubbled with black and red. Every inch of her body screamed as she tried to recover. She shouted for Alistair to help as golden eyes flashed before her. She looked down at Zevran, glowering back at her as she tightened the bandages around his chest.
Did it hurt this much? Did I hurt him...
Her own blood smeared under her hands as she coughed and tried to right herself. Plodding steps closing on her amidst a string of curses. An explosion of pain as he grabbed up her injured hand, crushing the inflamed fingers together, pinning her arm to the ground.
And she saw Zevran's hair hanging over her, softly whispering, "Lupita" as he pressed into her, cradling her in his arms, hot skin against cold wind.
I never lied. What changed.
Kyrn howled against the pain, and slammed her right fist into the guard's gorget, felt the metal buckle in, crunch against his adam's apple, crack her knuckles, gurgling as his breath cut off. She hooked tortured fingers into his armor, dragged him sideways, rolled onto his back and latched her knees around his neck, pressing hard until he breathed no more, finally smashing his head against the ground for good measure.
Why do they keep bringing me to this.
The guard's knife was still in his scabbard, but dropping his belt had scattered the items there all across the cell.
"You're awfully quiet, Alistair." Kyrn snapped. The key ring had somehow slid partway into his cell. "If you can't open the cell, pass ME the keys!"
Straining to reach them, she thumped the ground in emphasis, suddenly concerned by how Alistair lay on the ground, unmoving. "Come on, NOW you're quiet?"
As she strained to reach through the bars, the key ring just a hand's width past her reach, she finally started to smell the unmistakable stench of decay, and looked again, more critically.
The man in the cell next to her did not have blonde hair, even beneath the blood and grime. His hair was long and might have once been salt and pepper. Crumpled in a fetal position, the victim's frame was too emaciated and sickly to have been a strong, Chantry-trained templar a mere day before. She recoiled and stumbled back to the opposite side of her cell.
Who spoke to me? Who cried out…
She slid down the bars and buried her head in her hands, curling up as far from both bodies as she could.
"I tried," She sobbed.
The hours ticked by slowly, curled up trying not to move lest she twist a rib further. Pain swelled and ebbed from her head down to her hip, and the floor slowly ate pulled away her warmth until the pain of the cold seemed like a comfort against the rest of her injuries.
All around her the smell of death bloomed slowly, blanketing everything as the guard began the first small steps of decomposition. Were it not for that scent she might have noticed their scent, before their voices.
"Maker's tears, this is not good," Leliana's sweet lilt echoed over as tumblers clicked softly into place. "We'll never get her in uniform in that state-"
"Do you have a better plan?" Zevran cursed. He was dragging another body into the cell with her as they looked down at her. She wanted to touch his face, to feel that he was real, but her arm was too heavy.
"I don't know, I don't know!" Leliana fretted, turning in circles to take in all their surroundings as Kyrn had done hours, maybe even a day before.
"I should have brought the old crone," Zevran chuckled nervously, brushing blood-matted hair from her face with the gentlest touch of his hand. His fingertips were covered in soft suede, not the usual well-worn fitted drakeskin he prized. As she squinted up at them, she saw the brocade robes they wore. Leliana looked the perfect image of the high society bard she claimed to be.
"You look like a dandy," Kyrn winced. "Red suits you."
He stared back at her with a grim frown, before Leliana called him to help her carry a crate. With many apologies and a kiss to her forehead, he plucked her up like she weighed nothing, and they coaxed her into a supply crate, emptied of an order of daggers. The journey was agonizing, for the bend of her hips, the wood knocking into her knees, the sawdust suffocating her, and in the tight space, every breath jabbed at the already broken ribs, until it took every drop of concentration left to keep her breath steady, quiet, silent as death.
It was her ribs that awoke her again as they extricated her from the crate back at Arl Eamon's estate. Leliana complained of Zevran's insinuation that he was whoring her out to the Fort Drakon commander. Alistair was shouting in turn that they had gone to Fort Drakon and then in turn again that they had not taken him with them. It was the roar of mana whipping around Wynne that finally silenced them. The pain instantly eased, and a mist of light trickled over her skin. Warm and numb and calm, she hardly heard the commotion as they all began to argue again. Through the haze, someone scooped her up, and immediately she smelled Mink's foot and a new overtone of cedar and licorice that must have been tucked into the fancy clothes Zevran was still wearing, dappled with fresh blood that wasn't hers.
"I thought they'd killed you," Kyrn rasped out, burrying her head against his chest and gripping the smooth brocade tightly.
With a snort, he replied, "There are only a few men in this town skilled enough to best me. And I'm carrying one of them." He winced as she punched him, but laughed a sigh, gripping her tighter as they rounded a corner. His steps echoed wide and soft, narrowing and growing sharper as they came to the corridor of bed chambers.
The stone surfaces exaggerated all the sounds in the estate. Hard clipped echoes on each stride, and every chink of metal in his armor hidden under the robes resounded loud enough for her to hear, even as she heard the thunderous strides of De'Fen'len bounding up to meet them with the mabari galloping not far behind.
But he didn't take her to the bed chambers. Instead he laid her out on a wide, unyielding slab with only a thin blanket between her and more cold stone. As she opened her eyes, he was joined by Leliana and Wynne, who looked solemnly guilty as they tested bandages with a quick snap of their hands.
"Wounds like yours won't be healed in a day," Wynne tutted.
"We need to bind your ribs, or they might-," Leliana started, only to be cut off by Kyrn's growl of, "OUT!"
"We only mean to," Wynne pleaded.
"I thank you for your magics, but OUT. All of you," Kyrn snarled again. She snatched Zevran's hand as he turned to follow them out. "Not you."
"My Warden?"
"Please," she whispered, "don't leave me again."
He sat down beside the healer's table and blinked back at her slowly. "What do you need?"
With a wince she took stock of the room, noting small bathing tub, the neatly coiled rolls of good rag cloth bandages, and the countless ointments, most of which she did not recognize or knew were only good for making silly Chantry healers look impressive. Amongst the countless tinctures were several bottle of alcohol of varied purities.
"Those," She nodded to the spirits, "and those," to the bandages, and with a grimace, she tossed her head to a pile of split wood probably meant for the tiny iron stove beneath the tub. "And the wood."
"It is my turn to tourniquet you, then?"
"A bath first. Save a half dozen for later."
Just as he had a few nights prior, he tended the small fire with an experienced eye. With a water cistern nearby the tub was half-full in no time. Noticing her shivering, he took off the brocade robe and laid it over her. As she stiffened nervously, he laughed, "It is not mine. I… borrowed it from Anora."
With a huff she wrapped it tight around herself, and began to clean the blood from her face with it. When the water was warm he carried her to it, working silently and carefully, but hardly glancing in her direction, even as he helped her out of her pitiful, torn-up small clothes and braced against her so she did not slip in the water.
Deep, penetrating heat surrounded her as the water splashed up to meet her shoulders. "I might happily drown right now, if it felt like THIS when I died."
"One should not tempt fate," he murmurred, wringing out a cloth over her head. The water was already clouding sanguine before he even reached her shoulder. His hand jerked back as he began to scrub further down, and looked up as if he had been shocked.
"You can touch me," she stammered. "I can't move my arm well."
"No, I just," He shook his head, and clumsily pressed on with the washcloth. "We should be quick, we need to bind your ribs,"
"If I said something wrong, I apologize." It suddenly struck her how strange it must be, to bathe her like she was a helpless babe after all the times he'd explored her body with abandon. "The other night-"
"You do not need to apologize."
But his tone made her wonder if she did. He was fire and ice intermittently ever since their last evening together, until they talked about Alistair as one might discuss a chess piece, or a piece of art.
"Did I… did I hurt you? Insult you?" She pressed.
"No, please. Enough."
He thrust the cloth into the water and grasped her up. The movement was far more clumsy than he intended. It was hard to imagine that a wet, naked elf woman would be harder to move than a human warrior in full plate, but he had never accounted for just how heavy and unwieldy the body was when it did not move itself.
With only a small stumble, he finally was able to prop her up on a stool against the wall, and narrowly avoided giving her a new blow to the head. Relatively clean and dripping from the bath, she was surprisingly striking. As she rounded her eyes on him, he was suddenly aware that she might not want to be naked any longer.
"Zevran," she stammered, then wordlessly snapped her finger and pointed to a pile of thin blankets in the corner.
It occurred to him that he had never seen her body in light any brighter than the dying edge of a sunset. He had never realized how scarred she was amidst the galaxy of freckles he'd caught in moonlight. Dark pink concentric circles dappled her midsection from the edge of one hip up to almost the opposite breast. Her leg had a jagged gash that was almost invisible against the skin until it caught the side-long light of the window. Fresher marks overlaid those, brighter pink and almost red slashes signaling their injuries from bandits, hurlocks, and worse over the past few months.
As he flapped the blanket open, he pondered aloud, "How did you get those strange markings across your stomach? That is no knife wound."
"Creeping Glee," She sniffed as she raised one arm as best she could to let him wrap the blanket smoothly around her. "Harel'thorn. Big nasty bushes with pretty, bright green leaves and barbs as long as your fingers. Mostly just painful and irritating. But I fell into a briar when I was younger. Maybe twelve summers? After the fall, I can hardly remember anything until that Autumn. Keeper told me I was feverish for months. When you get the venom deep it blisters your skin and feels like you're burning alive."
"You got lucky." He laid out the wood splints and looked them over. It occurred to him that he'd never learned how to really take care of a body before. Even now, he was just mimicing what she had done for him. What if Wynne should have healed her longer? What if another venom was lurking beneath the obvious wounds this time as well.
"I don't feel lucky," She muttered, gingerly touching the side of her head where a large welt pressed up through the small corn row braids at her temple.
He worked as fast as he could to set the splints. With each tug to guide the bandages into place she cried out, just a tight-mouth squeal at first, but a gasping screech by the end, as he finished the last knot. He lent her his shoulder and they walked lopsidedly back to her room, where she fell into bed with a final yelp before her wolf and mabari fought for the rest of the space on the tall mattress.
Wynne finally reappeared and again cast some kind of healing magic. This one soothed the aches, and the old mage said it would begin to knit her shoulder back together. "She'll want her bow arm back as soon as possible." It was only the first of many spells that she would repeat as the eventful evening turned into a long night.
Leliana arrived with thin broth, soft food, and a ballad on her tongue that set Kyrn to scowling at once.
"You Elvahn is terrible," she muttered.
"Oh?" Leliana replied sweetly, "That ballad earned me much praise in Orlais."
"That's because the only elves you met couldn't speak Elvahn, or were more worried about grovelling at your feet," Kyrn spat.
"Braska, do you have to be so cruel?" Zevran finally snapped. He had been caught between the doorway and her bed the whole evening. Anytime he looked to leave she leveled a stern glare at him until he relented.
"You're right," the two women said at once.
Leliana chuckled, and fluffed one of the pillows absently. "It's true… I did not realize how much groveling there really was. Until it was too late."
"Your voice is nice, though. No… it's lovely," Kyrn stammered apologetically. "I promise not to hurt your delicate shem ears with Orelesian if you'll stop trying to sing our ballads."
"Deal," Leliana smirked as she plucked up the bowl Kyrn had ravenously emptied.
So the wheel continued to spin over the next several hours. Broth and spells and his Warden falling in and out of sleep. When she was not awake to keep him, it was the wolf insistently crossing between him and the doorway, until finally he pulled up one of the padded chairs that looked like it had never been sat upon, and leaned over the mattress with a sigh of defeat.
Alistair peered in, and cleared his throat.
"Rest assured, If you wake her I will gut you," Zevran hissed. What could the royal bastard want in the dead of night, anyhow.
"I just," he began, and ran his hands through his hair and threw his arms down again. Someone in the castle had found the man a copper-tinged silk shirt with lions embroidered in gold bullion, facing each other across the width of the chest. It was easy to see where the conflict lay: between the silk and his heart. "I was hoping she could advise me."
"What advice could our fair prince possibly need?" Zevran drolled.
"It's just… it's Anora… I don't know how I didn't see this coming."
"Because you don't see anything coming," Zevran thought bitterly.
"I knew I was the King's son, but I'm a bastard. And now my Uncle and Teagan and all their advisors are urging me to marry her! I just don't know what do do."
"Marry her," Zevran yawned.
"Are you mad?"
"No," Zevran clucked back, glancing between him and the bed to be sure she did not wake. "It's quite simple. If you can be royalty, Always choose royalty. Whether you become royalty or not, a blade might find your throat. But if you're royalty, you'll have a lot more fun beforehand."
"Really?" he spat back. "Just like that?"
Zevran shrugged. It was not a dilemma he would ever have to face. To begin, he was an elf, and it was the unspoken rule that an elf would never be allowed to rule anyone. And as for the Crows, they might be collectively wealthy, but there were always powers in place to keep them at each other's throats instead the throats of every noble above them. Privilege was something you couldn't take with blood spilled. It had to be blood born.
"I can't believe you! So you're saying, if you were in my position, you'd marry Anora and forsake HER?" Alistair pointed to his sleeping Warden, and Zevran's chest ached to think of it.
Before he could respond, Kyrn rolled towards Zevran and mumbled sleepily, "Alistair can't have you. I claimed you first."
Her drowsy, nonsensical words reduced the prince to a blubbering, stammering, incoherent mess. He pointed menacingly to Zevran a few more times, until he was lead out at nose-point by the Mabari, who hunkered down in the doorway with a rumbling snort.
"Claimed," he thought wistfully. "As if I was ever really free…"
She'd awoken to find Zevran passed out against her leg, a blanket thrown over him so hap-hazardly that at first she didn't see his head, save for the slow up and down of the covers.
At the foot of the bed were not one, but two wolves now. One brown-eyed, and one dark as night with golden eyes squinting back at her.
"I appreciate your concern, Morrigan."
Comparing her situations, Drakon was excruciating. The recovery was painful, and today was merely grueling. All her muscles were clenched from her fingertips to her chest, and it took all morning to try and pull her arm back far enough to strike a decent shot.
The day continued in training and recovery in turns. Wynne would coax magic through her skin, and then pull her arm back to loosen the tendons without warning, until the entire estate was used to her screams by the next evening.
By the time the sun set again, she was amazed to look in the mirror and don her armor again (it seemed that Zevran and Leliana had stolen it out of Fort Drakon alongside her), she looked in the mirror and marveled at the elf who stared back at her.
Her eyes were sunken and dark, but her skin was smooth, her complexion almost healthy despite two days of hell and the gnawing chasm in her heart. She had gained so much muscle over the past three months, that her arms flexed as she grasped her hand open and closed.
She continued to stare, feeling a numbness creep over her to see the body that felt so broken, seemingly whole. The only hint of the horrors she'd seen was wedged under her fingernails, a dark red rim of blood that wouldn't scrub out.
Did the same me come back?
Where does the woman end, and the Warden begin?
How long until the Warden becomes the Darkspawn herself?