The next morning, first thing after breakfast, I headed for the Armorer. The finished product was amazing, at least to my standards. It was a beautiful green Veridium and black leather set. Large plates, but thin enough to allow movement. My arms were covered mostly in the leather, but the shoulders, elbows and wrists had the strange metal. I wore leggings and boots that came just below the armorer told me that he had seen ancient elven armor and had remade the set for me. All in all, it was beautiful.

Before I left, I asked if he had any longbows, since I had forgotten mine back in Denerim. He handed me one with a quiver full of arrows. I placed the quiver and bow around my shoulder and sheathed my daggers at my hips, and left to meet the other recruits and Alistair.

They were waiting by one of the gates that opened up to the wilds and Alistair was briefing the other two recruits on what was expected of them. He was just finishing up and noticed me. "Ah, looks like you're finished with the armorer, and we're all done here. Before we enter the Wilds," he continued, reaching into a pouch at his belt, "the three of you must keep these on your person." He handed us three vials, each with the fist letter of our names scrawled into it. "These are the vials that you will collect the blood of your darkspawn in. That blood will be an important part of your initiation."

I placed y vial into one of my own pouches at my hip. "Is there anything that we need to know about these darkspawn?" Ser Jory asked. "I mean, anything for those of us who have never fought them before?" I could easily hear the nervousness in his voice.

"There is one thing," Alistair answered. "Don't, under any circumstances, consume their blood, or get hit by a tainted weapon."

"Ha!" Daveth exclaimed. "Why would we want to? We know it's deadly to us! Even the Chasind won't touch their bodies."

With my bow still on my back, I leaned over quickly, knocking it on his head. He yelped and reached up to rub his head and glared at me. "Ops, sorry," I said shrugging. "I was only adjusting."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We left, soon after, into the Wilds, and traveled Southeast for most of the morning and early afternoon. The Wilds was mostly mossy forest, and the air was thick with humidity, but still quite chilly.

Alistair led us through the forest till we found a clearing, deep in the forest, that was somewhat dry. In the center there was the remnants of an old fire pit and stones surrounding it with logs on three sides. "We'll make camp here," Alistair told us. "Daveth. You and Darrian hunt us something for dinner. And stay together. Jory, you and I will set up camp."

Oh joy... Daveth threw his bag to the ground and ran off into the forest. "Maker preserve me." I took my bag off, gently, and followed him in.

There were so many sounds in the marshy land; frogs, birds, insects. If it wasn't for my very acute hearing, I never would have been able to locate the other man. He was crouching down with his bow and an arrow ready to fire. I crouched next to him when I caught up and took out my own bow.

"I'm going to get the biggest buck you've ever seen," he whispered to me. Show off..

"I'll just be happy to find something edible to eat," I replied.

"Oh, come on, Kni- I mean, elf." At least he was smart enough not to call me that again. "Why not make a bet?"

I smirked at him. You want to loose, then?"

"Me, loose?" He laughed. "What are the stakes?"

I thought about that for a moment, then looked him, straight in the eye. "Loser goes through the initiation first." He nodded and we shook hands and started our hunt.

It didn't take long before we found some deer, but they were all does, so we ignored them. Traveling further into the swampy land, I left marks on the trees with a small knife to show us the way back.

We soon found more deer tracks and Daveth quickly followed them. I looked at them and I felt my stomach drop. Something was odd about them. I mean, the tracks were about three times the normal size of a deer. When we found it, I felt my stomach drop even lower. Something was seriously wrong with this buck.

It was huge, with large, gnarly fifteen point antlers. It's coat was dirty and patchy, showing much of it's skin. It's eyes bloodshot, fangs sticking out from it's mouth, and it was so malnourished you could not only see it's ribs, but also some of it's intestines. Oh Maker...

I started backing away before it saw us, but Daveth started readying his bow. I placed my hand on his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Hunting a buck," he said, shrugging my hand off. "What does it look like?"

"Daveth, can't you see that thing is sickly? Something is wrong with it."

"You just want to shoot it before I get the chance to."

"Daveth, this is not about a damn competition. This is about common sense. We need to hunt elsewhere!" Why would he not listen to me, the stupid arrogant bastard?

Suddenly, I felt hot breath on my neck and I saw the fearful look in Daveth's eyes. There was a smell of death now, rotting flesh; I had to swallow back the bile in my throat. I slowly turned my head to see angry bloodshot eyes looking back at me. The sickly deer was staring right at me, only a foot away from my face, and was very angry with our presence.

I started to back away slowly, Daveth right behind me. The buck lowered it's head, pointing it's gnarly antlers towards us, snorting, but otherwise didn't move. From my peripheral vision, I saw an arrow pointing towards the buck. "DAMNIT, DAVETH, DON'T!"

It was too late; Daveth fired his arrow and it hit the beast square between it's eyes. Now it was furious. It charged towards us and the two of us dodged out of the way. It turned sharply running into a tree and shook it's head and looked straight at me. It snorted once and charged again; I took off running.

I leaped over logs, dashed between trees, and ducked under low branches, but the beast was hot on my trail, catching up quickly. I looked around for some means of escape, and saw a tree with very sturdy branches. I ran over and jumped for the first branch, pulling myself up right before the creature ran right into the trunk. It shook it's head again and looked up at me, and started rearing, trying to reach me. I easily climbed higher, out of it's reach before it could grab me with it's fangs or antlers. It then, realizing it couldn't touch me, started ramming the tree, trying to knock me out. It was alot stronger than it looked and shook the tree so violently I slipped and almost fell, wrapping m arms and legs around the branch, hanging upside down. This was not good. I couldn't get a good hold either, because of the soggy moss covering it and I was slipping. Pretty soon I would fall to my death.

Suddenly the beast screeched in pain as an arrow was shot through it's side and it looked around till it saw Daveth reaching for another arrow.

It turned it's attention to him and charged, reaching him before he could ready his bow. It's antlers knocked the bow right out of his hands and started attacking him. At that moment I moved faster than ever before, and pulled myself back onto the branch, jumping up, grabbing my dagger and landing on top of the best's back, and quickly slit it's throat before it could hurt Daveth. It screeched in pain as I jumped off and knelt beside the human who was now cowering in fear. The beast slumped to the ground, black liquid spurting from the incision, breathing heavily until it breathed it's last.

Daveth gave a huge sigh of relief. "Thanks, elf." I raised an eyebrow at him . He was lucky I was there. He would have been dead.

Then my elven ears picked up the sound of a twig snapping and I took my bow and strung an arrow in the direction of the sound. "Shh..." I told Daveth.

He froze. "Is there another one?" he asked.

"Don't move," I whispered. I pulled back the arrow and let it go. The sound of something fell to the ground. I looked down to the human, a smirk on my face. "I win."