"Thirty-day guarantee,

But they can't have meant me.

After all I was born to a child-proof world.

No sharp corners or glass,

Small objects or plastic bags.

Please, these are death to a delicate girl."

Thirty Whacks – The Dresden Dolls

Demoralized was the wrong word, but it was the first word that came to mind in terms of Elissa's current level of self-esteem. She was getting slightly better as she clumsily swung along as she aided in the fight to the beacon: She flinched a little less, and got knocked down far fewer times than before, but was still not confident enough in her skills in battle to stray far from Alistair's side. A cruel part of her – that is, the one who was doted on as a child and raised in a castle – took advantage of the brave man's attentiveness to her well being and his observance of her lack of skill. He knew that she poor in a fight and thus, took hits and blows that were intended for her while he valiantly kept her from harm and he helped her to her feet with a strong hand and an encouraging smile the few times that she did falter. Ashamedly, a small part of her felt damsel-y indeed.

However, there was an honesty and genuine quality to these actions that left her with no other option that to realize that his behaviours were not those of servitude to his better, but rather multiple acts that exemplified Duncan's promise that the Grey Wardens were a brotherhood and watched each other's backs. Duncan had told Elissa that Alistair was a recent recruit, but the concept of loyalty did not seem to be new to him at all.

"Sorry." She said sharply, innocently, when she slipped on some kind of visceral remains and grabbed him by the waist to keep from falling. "Sorry!" She repeated, instantly turning beetroot and hurrying ahead as fleetingly as her legs could carry her.

"Sorry?" He called out from behind and she heard the dull clang of a shield being driven into someone's – or something's – face.

She was learning in short order, and much to her own feminine fluster, that Alistair was a good man, which caused her face to pinken around the freckles whether she liked it or not and she liked it not for she was a Grey Warden now and she had a task set ahead of her that far overshadowed mooning over a handsome man like an innocent maiden. Mooning over men like an innocent maiden was expected of her before – It was commonplace: Mooning was her glinting shard of metal, clutched in trembling knuckles. Mooning was her cured and battle-worn armour. People would have raised their eyebrows disapprovingly if she hadn't done it.

For a woman, battles were not fought with swords and mauls, but rather with words and subtle acts of coercion: A vulnerable posture, delicate and coy could send a thousand men unquestioningly into battle and a well timed but intent filled glance over the shoulder to meet with the right eyes in the heady light of dusk could be more persuasive than any implement of torture. But now... now it all seemed so meaningless and inappropriate given the circumstance; the darkspawn were not going to simply take knee for all of her feminine wiles.

Handsome...

Broad in the shoulder...

No older than five and twenty by my eyes...

Kindly voice... light hair... warm eyes and -

She mused on and on in her mind and her hand flew of its own accord, driving her hunting into the neck of a genlock.

Oh my...

"Whatever you're thinking about right now must be fascinating, but we have to go!" She felt Alistair's hand wrap around her thin wrist and she was pulled up the stairs, trying desperately not to trip on her feet or slip on any more gore as they climbed.

"D – do you enjoy being a Grey Warden?" She stammered as he hauled her along. Elissa winced; Alistair was chivalrous indeed, but perhaps not nearly as gentle of touch as he was of voice. "Of course right now would be a foolish time to have such mindless conversation... it's just I – I think more clearly when I think of all the things at once."

"All the things?" Alistair repeated incredulously. "How can you think of all the things?" He pushed her against the wall and pressed her to it with his back, grabbing the hurlock that had just swiped at them by the joints of its armour and dumping it down the stairs. He sighed hard and grabbed her hand again, pulling her up steps faster than she could keep up. The question repeated to her might have made her feel stupid if he hadn't been laughing when he said it.

"I only prefer to, is all." She said. "Now would you be so kind as to assist me with my query as I was kind enough to cater to yours?"

"I do." He said, pausing at the top of the stairs, placing his hand on the door. His voice was earnest and there was no lie in his words. "I do very much enjoy it." He adjusted his grip on his longsword, licked his lips, and pushed open the door, another rather silly grin splitting his face when he looked into the room. "Ooh look! A troll."

The smell of the thing hit her first, but then she saw the beast, she nearly turned on her heel and ran, but she held her ground and looked at Alistair with the hope the her face was brave despite the fear in her heart. "What shall we do? What shall I do?"

Alistair lifted his shield and rolled his shoulders. "These things are slow and stupid... but that doesn't mean I want to get hit by one though, so we have one of two options I think. We could both charge it and try to hack it to death before it kills us, or..." He sighed and bit his lip, mulling over the options. "Or I could distract the bloody thing while you find a quick and nimble way to put that knife that I gave you to use." He nodded at the bloodied pig-sticker, dripping in her hand, smiling rather slyly as he did so.

"Kill such an enormous creature with so small a weapon?" She said, unable to accept this as a logical approach.

"Elissa, we really don't have the luxury of time to argue about this." Elissa frowned at Alistair's words, "Cripple it; go for tendons and joints until you can start bleeding out more vital areas like its neck and arms. Just be quick about it: Make your attack and then fall back to a safe distance until I can open another window for you."

"You have put a great deal of faith in me, Alistair. Best pray to the Maker that I don't let you down."

The troll snorted in the chamber, boring with its most recent kill, it glanced around, great snout covered with sticky burgundy gore. Alistair paid it no mind though; he only looked at Elissa with patient understanding, and a gamesome twist of the lips.

"I think you should give yourself a bit more credit." He remarked.

He left her with that, for the moment had now passed and he was edging into the room, ready for the first strike. Elissa hung back by the door, clothed in her fantastic armour and holding an ordinary hunting knife, debating deeply how exactly to go about this.

How am I to be any better at troll-slaying than Alistair? He is stronger. He seems to think I have strengths that he does not possess… which is ridiculous, as what little I know of war is plain for all to see: I am no warrior.

Her back felt cold when the realization struck her; Alistair didn't expect her to be a warrior. Alistair knew she wasn't a warrior. Alistair had told her to keep to the shadows and advised her to use the small, concealable knife as a tool to bleed out her foes simply because she was nobility.

I belong to a class of high-bred cutthroats and assassins: Since the dawn of time, the rich of the land have carried the keys and played our silent games of espionage while the common people suffer for it. Why… he thinks I am no better than a cheating sneak-thief!

Everyone knew the legends and histories of the highborn ladies sold into the wedding beds of men far too old and frail to be proud husbands. "Oh Maker above it was dreadful, he died in his sleep before our marriage could be consummated!" The highborn lady would say, with her face wet from forced tears and her fingers still wrapped around the pillow that had stilled her husband's breathing forever. A clever Teryn might poison a wife who couldn't bear him sons, or have an excuse to have her executed conveniently formulated… it was all a big dark game of mystery, gossip and murder.

Clearly, Alistair assumed noble blood was interchangeable with being a back alley shadow-killer and Elissa couldn't think of a single worthy argument off the top of her head to prove him wrong.

Very well then, Elissa thought, setting aside her own immediate feelings of indignation. Perhaps we will think of it less as war, and more as a serpent striking out at an unsuspecting mouse.

The troll roared then; a dark, hideous belch that left her ears ringing, and she knew she could philosophise about her role in this fight for much longer; it was time to act.

In contrast to Alistair's outright and brazen charge into the room, Elissa slipped in quietly, but quickly immediately noting the few darkspawn that circled the fray attempting to draw Alistair's attention away from the troll and towards them in order to leave him vulnerable to battering and crushing from the enormous troll.

The room was circular and high-ceilinged, allowing for her to give the scuffle a wide berth as she silently studied what was happening and chose her first target; the hurlock on the outside edge of the fight. It was weaker than the others, flagging as it still tried to destroy Alistair in its desperation.

She crept around the edge of the room, still surveying the hurlock for the best place to drive the hunting knife into its body. It wielded a short but vicious looking axe in its right hand, raising it high above its shoulder before each strike. Elissa stood in the shadows and waited with unpracticed patience; she knew it was vital that she wait and observe just like she observed men and women of court silently, keeping to herself and waiting until they revealed more that way than they did with legitimate small talk.

Up, up, up the hurlock's arm went and for biding her time she came away prosperous; she shot out from the shadows in two long steps, her footfalls muted by boots designed for stealth. She grabbed the raised arm with her left hand and without hesitation, crushed the knife into the soft, broad space of flesh where the hurlock's kidney was. It fell with a bellow and she dragged the knife across its throat to silence it for good before darting back into the maze of shadows and debris that were just as much her armour as the leather that covered her body, shaking with adrenaline, but victorious nonetheless.

The other darkspawn paused only briefly to exchange looks, wordlessly deciding what to do with their phantom enemy before breaking away from Alistair and the troll and fanning out towards the darkness that Elissa hid in.

Indeed it was too bad for them that by the time they arrived at the place in the shadows she fled into she was no longer there and was instead, waiting quite safely on the other side of the room watching as confusion to set in.

She had picked off two more and repeated the strategy twice before she was finally cornered by the remaining foe; another hurlock. Turning her own trick against her in the malarkey, it had stalked her while she took out its comrades, backing her against a wall only moments after she bled her most recent victims.

Elissa could see over the hurlock's shoulder that Alistair was still well-engaged with the troll. In fact he was taking a tremendous beating. His shield was indeed impressive, but it did little against the obsidian-hard horns of the monstrous culmination of matted fur and muscle as it battered against him: She had to hurry but she had to do it without alerting the troll to her presence.

The hurlock took another step towards her, cracked, broken teeth meshed in a sick sneer as it prepared to end her life. She stepped backwards until she felt the hard brick wall against her back and she slid down it, curled in a protective ball, a tiny sob seeping from her lips as the killer loomed abover her.

The hurlock laughed at her display of fear; it took pleasure in her weakness and with some amount of triumph amidst her terror, Elissa noted that this time, no one would get between herself and death. Not her mother, not Alistair: She was naked.

The hurlock bent and roared in her face; it was a sick, twisted hiss that smelled of decay and fear and coated her face in something that should have been saliva, but wasn't.

"N-no… please don't." She whimpered, turning her face away from the creature's pungent breath. It paid her plea little mind, only wrinkling its nose and sniffing at her. She wondered if it could sense the blood of its kin inside of her. "Please…" She turned her tear-filled eyes up at it and begged the Maker to give her what she was desperate for. The hurlock raised its sword above its head and she instantly sat forward, uncurling herself and pulling the darkspawn's legs out from under it, hopping atop its chest and pummelling her knife hilt-deep into its face as many times as she could. She rolled away from the empty eye sockets and pulpy scraps of flesh draped over scratched and shattered bone, breathing heavily, but not taking the time for tea and cakes by any means; there was still a troll

Feeling invigorated and empowered at last, she scrambled to her feet.

"I'm coming!" She bellowed, sprinting across the room parallel to the troll's back.

There is little to do and the option is plain to see; I must throw myself.

So she did. She launched herself across the surface of the cobble floor, using to her advantage the sleek, cured armour that coated her, drawing her knife in a diagonal slash across the right tendon of the troll's right leg.

She landed roughly on her shoulder, but instantly picked herself up and scuttled into the shadows again before the wounded troll could reach back with its arm and swat her away.

A relieved and slightly proud huff of air fell from her mouth as she watched the troll fall heavily to one knee.

"It's still cranky!" Alistair's shout reminded her. "And deadly!" He dodged a fist and landed a well-swung hit to the troll's arm and Elissa launched into action once again, this time going straight for the monster's back. "Wait! What are you doing?" His words were drowned by her own footsteps as she took a long-shot of a flying leap onto the troll's back, her eyes clenched shut until she felt thick, woolly fur under her fingers.

She wrested herself up onto the undulating, flexing shoulders of the troll as it flailed and bucked in an effort to throw her off, but she clung tight and buried her knife into the hollow part of the left side of its neck, just above the collarbone.

The troll's movements became more and more erratic and violent but she held on, feeling the knife tear the tendons and hard muscle fibre beneath it, she jerked the blade violently out of the troll and inserted it again a few inches higher, cranking it back and forth like a winch until blood spurted everywhere and the troll staggered, finally bucking her off its back. She landed like a sack of flour on the hard floor and struggled to breathe; her vision swam and her lungs simply refused to fill. She rolled to her side, eyes bulging, desperately trying to pull in some precious oxygen.

The troll fell nearby with a heavy thud and she knew it was over, despite her overwhelming inability to breath. Lead filled her lungs and she was aware of the harsh, vacuous noise her lungs made as her throat rattled and wheezed in an attempt to draw air. She forced herself onto her hands and knees, casting around for the torch that would be needed to light the beacon and finish the deed.

She coughed deeply, sensing blood trickling out of her mouth, and the thick crackle that left her mouth, aware of the internal injuries she surely had, but she still rose to her feet, grabbing the nearest flaming piece of wood to her and flinging it into the kindle and plank that made up the beacon.

"Elissa… move…"

She whirled around too late; the last thing she saw was Alistair on his knees, peppered with arrow shafts. Confusion darted away like a small bird into the sky and her own excruciating pain greeted her less than a blink later and all that was earthly and warm became so splendidly far away.