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Beneath the Vigil

Elly grumbled as she trailed along after Oghren through the basement of Vigil's Keep. "Darkspawn. They're like rats. No matter how many you kill they just keep popping up…"

"Maybe if we were to breed some very large cats," Anders began, trailing behind her.

Elly waved him to silence. "Hold on, do you hear something?" The three of them followed a wooden thunking noise down a gently curving corridor. Waiting for them at the end were three darkspawn. The monsters quickly abandoned their efforts to break through the barricaded door and pulled free their weapons.

For three Grey Wardens, the monsters were simple to dispatch. Elly went to check the blocked door while the other two surveyed the hall. "Looks like we weren't the first to do battle here," the dwarf grunted.

Elly knocked on the closed door. "Hello? Is there anyone in there?" She gave the door a shove, but it wouldn't budge. "If you're in there, stand back. I'm going to-" She shrieked and launched herself backwards as the door burst into flames. "Anders!"

"What?" her fellow mage asked innocently. "You're hardly singed at all!"

"There could be people behind there!" she snapped as she got to her feet, brushing Maker only knew what from her robes. "Save it for the darkspawn." Taking a calming breath, she summoned frost to cool the sputtering flames and cautiously stepped inside.

At first glance, she thought only corpses cluttered the room. A couple Grey Wardens and a handful of the keep's guards had crawled or been dragged into the room. The remains of what might have been crates full of old rations littered the doorway. She kicked some of the debris out of the way and shuffled farther into the room. "They must've been trying to stop the darkspawn at the source down here. Only there weren't enough of them, and they had to fall back. The darkspawn must have come in large numbers to…"

Her words trickled away into silence as the body sitting propped in the far corner lifted its sword. She paused cautiously, taking in the Grey Warden armor and the blood still seeping from the shoulder joint. Not a ghoul then. "There's someone still alive in here!"

She carefully picked her way across the littered room to the wounded Grey Warden. There was something familiar about him, even under all the blood, both his own and the darkspawn's. Recognition clamped around her chest like a vise. "Dear Maker," she managed to gasp out. "Cullen? Are you alright?"

"Well fart me a lullaby, isn't this that templar fellow you played slippery nugs with?" Oghren sniggered to himself as he watched Elly blush from her neck to her hair. "Hah, Zev was right. That is so easy."

Elly glared at the dwarf and - by force of habit - summoned the tiniest bit of frost to cool her heated face. The last thing she needed was more people playing the 'Make the Hero of Fereldan Blush' game. She tilted her staff in Oghren's direction but it only made him laugh harder.

Though, perhaps she didn't have to worry about Anders picking up the game. Elly took in the other mage's shocked expression; he seemed far less amused by her reaction. "A templar! And you did what?"

Oghren snorted and nudged the human mage knowingly. "You know. Waxed the brass trumpet, polished the old anvil, greased the-"

"Shut up!" Elly hissed at Oghren, but her attention had returned to the wounded templar turned Warden. He looked haggard, weakened by multiple wounds and the strain of being stuck in the cellars for too long. "Cullen? It's me, Elly. Let me heal you and then we can get you up to the infirmary."

The sword point followed her as she drew closer, but after a moment's hesitation it dipped to the ground with a muffled clang. "Can't be a hallucination," Cullen muttered, his bleary gaze drifting from the approaching mage to settle on the snickering dwarf. "Far too embarrassing."

Elly grimaced and nodded in silent agreement. Sliding the sword out of her way, she knelt beside him and waited until he nodded his consent. Only then did she begin the complicated process of extricating his dented shoulder piece.

"Already stripping him down, eh Warden?" Oghren elbowed Anders in the hip. "Maybe we should give them some privacy, huh?"

"Yes!" Elly blurted out. She blushed again, scrambling to correct herself before the dwarf could run with that fumble. "I mean, no, I don't need privacy. But you can go and tell someone we need a stretcher down here." Oghren snorted and shuffled out the door, a narrow-eyed Anders in tow. When Cullen tried to protest, she shushed him. "You've been stuck down here for a couple days. You need to rest. And there's no way I'm letting you climb those stairs. Don't even try to argue with me on that point, or I'll turn you into a toad."

Despite the pain from his crushed shoulder, Cullen's lips twitched. "You can't turn anyone into a toad," he pointed out.

"Damn. That always worked on the politicians." Elly finally worked the deformed armor piece free and began to prepare a healing spell for the now exposed shoulder. She sucked air through her teeth as she took in the condition of the wound. "This doesn't look good. I can repair the basic damage but you'll need to rest it or it won't mend properly."

Cullen craned his neck to try to get a better view of his own shoulder. "So is that what you've been doing at court? Threatening to turn people into toads?"

Elly didn't answer as she went through the familiar motions of the healing spell. She gave him an apologetic look as she prodded the shoulder a few more times to be sure, then nodded in satisfaction. "That pretty much sums up my job after the initial workload tapered off," she finally admitted, in response to his question. "With Anora and Eamon around, Alistair didn't need much help from me once things settled down some. Not that I was ever much help in the first place. During the rebuilding I was good at making lists of what needed to be dealt with. But dealing with people…" She shook her head. "Mostly I just attended meetings and looked scary. Maybe dipped my staff threateningly, that sort of thing."

Cullen frowned, settling himself more comfortably now that he could move his arm. "But you didn't actually cast anything at them, did you?"

"No, of course not!" Elly sat back away from her patient with a sigh. She struggled not to let her disappointment at the question show on her face. "A terrified diplomat might be useful, but you can't do much with an ice sculpture. Nice decorations for awhile, but then they start to melt and it's such a mess."

He studied her sternly for a moment, and she could tell he was forming some kind of reprimand about how magic is not something to jest about. But then he stopped and shook his head slowly. "That's one of King Alistair's 'jokes' isn't it?"

"Perhaps." Elly fussed with her robe, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. She tried to pull the slit sides of the robe's skirt together so he couldn't see she was wearing lightweight cloth pants underneath. Besides, she told herself, it was nothing to do with his suggestion; it was just a bit chilly down here. That's all it was.

Her heart seemed to be pounding loud enough to alert any remaining darkspawn in the area. And she couldn't blame it all on anxiety. "Look, Cullen, about what happened with the archdemon, I-"

"Better get decent!" a voice bellowed from down the hallway. "We're coming with that stretcher, and there's not room for both of you on it if yer all tangled up!" A moment later Oghren appeared around the bend, leading the team of men with the stretcher. "Hope we're not, heh heh, interrupting anything too steamy."

"That's enough, Oghren." Elly struggled to keep her voice steady in front of the Vigil's Keep men. It was a hard task, but not because of Oghren's inappropriate comments. Even before they'd been interrupted, Elly had seen Cullen's barriers go back up. The mention of the archdemon had triggered that stone-like templar mask of his, and once again she found herself questioning whether agreeing to Morrigan's request was the right decision.

As Cullen was carefully shifted onto the stretcher and carried out, Elly retrieved her staff and marched herself over to Oghren. She scrunched her face up into something unreadable; it wasn't a smooth unflinching mask like Cullen's, but it was the best she could do. "Where did Anders get off to? There's still darkspawn to kill."