Snippet #1368145

A good half-hour into her breakneck run, and Asmara's lungs were burning with each new intake of breath. Slender legs far from used to this sustained level of activity on unfamiliar terrain were close to giving out on her, feet dragging as lead weights might. She was constantly throwing furtive green-eyed glances over her shoulder as though her pursuers might reappear at any moment, but she knew that this was likely not the case. Oh, how she wished she had not lost her beloved horse in the chaos that was the Battle of Ostagar. Chances were, the men following her would take their time waiting for her to run herself to exhaustion after the manner of a frightened rabbit, and then kill her when they found her. Had she been a little bit more world-wise, she might have known that it was not death but imprisonment that she should fear the most.

Perhaps luckily, naivete spared her these thoughts, and so when her foot caught on a stray root and she crashed to the ground, her only thought was that she was going to die a most untimely death. Ironic, that she had survived the joining only to be killed in such an inane manner as by an enemy soldier.

Somehow, Asmara willed herself to her feet once more, and tried to keep her focus on the road ahead. Perhaps she was finally at enough distance to try and make her passage less obvious. Either way, she was going to need some time to catch her breath, and she veered off her path into a thicket, hoping to preserve at least some measure of stealth, though a rogue she was not, and would have to rely on the inattentiveness of others.

It was a scant few moments, though, before a man's voice broke the unnatural silence that Darkspawn presence had produced in the Wilds, and Asmara knew her fortunes had fled her. The man looked more mage than soldier, between the staff and the Circle robes, but she knew well that sometimes the greatest danger for one such as herself could be not from the Chantry's Templars, but another mage. So many of them hated what apostates had done to their reputations, or so she had gathered, and it was they who knew best the dangers of the Fade and maleficarum. Asmara was no such creature, but then the fact that nobody really believed her when she said as much constituted the main reason she was a Grey Warden in the first place.

She opened and closed her mouth several times, shooting furtive glances back over her shoulder once again. It was a difficult thing, deciding how to answer his question, and it took her a moment to process what he was actually asking through her adrenaline-addled mind. "Ostagar... the King has fallen. Teyrn Loghain, he..." she cut herself off and shook her head. There was no way she'd be believed, even she knew that. Teyrn Loghain was a hero, as much as anyone in Ferelden could claim to be. And what was she? An apostate, a Grey Warden, a mage, and elf with no status, all marks against her in popular opinion. Or at least they were now.

Wide green eyes regarded the man pleadingly. "Please... if Teyrn Loghain's men come through here, tell them you saw nothing. I... I can't run for much longer, anyway."