Legend (Dragon Age Origins)

Chapter 2: The Road To Ostagar

A PAIR OF PALE BLUE EYES PEERED BACK AT DRU through the vanity, echoing the foreignness of her new appearance. It had been so long since she'd last seen herself, that the person in the mirror had become a stranger.

She had always been pale but now her skin was like ivory snow. A long bath washed the dirt and stench of the dungeons away, leaving blue veins that stood out like paths in a forest, sprinkled by freckles like autumn leaves. The deep green and purple bruises marked the ponds and rivers, her protruding bones were ridges, and the scars...

Downcasting her eyes, Dru squeezed the knife in her hand until her knuckles turned white. Duncan had given her the blade before departing to purchase supplies. She had insisted. It was the only way she'd feel safe. Yet her heart still hammered at every noise. Every creak in the floorboards; the distant sound of voices in the street below.

Grabbing a fistful of matted hair, Dru sawed the jagged blade through it. As the strands slipped through her fingers, she felt relief. She began to hack at the hair, her movements turning sporadic and violent until she was standing in a bathroom coloured with auburn.

Her hair had once been a source of pride. Her best feature, she would wear it in a long braid down her back. It now ended just below her jawline, the strands haphazard in length. The girl in the mirror stared at Dru with wild eyes. The very image of the feral animal the humans claimed she was.

Stilling her breath, Dru ran her hands through her hair, smoothing it down and pulling free the loose pieces.

"The Grey Wardens," she said to the empty room. Her breath fogged up the glass, concealing the stranger from view.

She closed the bathroom door behind her and sat on the bed. Her fingers twisted in her lap. It had been an hour and forty-two minutes since Duncan left. After they had left the estate and the horrors within, he had taken Dru to a small inn located in the market district of the city. It was where he had been staying for the past week while he negotiated her release. The room was neat and sparsely decorated, with only a dirt-speckled cloak laid over an armchair to suggest that someone had been staying there. Duncan travelled light. She supposed she would now, too.

She turned her gaze to the narrow window across from her. A small bead of light illuminated the dust that hung in the air. From her position on the bed, she could just glimpse the street on the far side of the marketplace. Two children were playing in the mud, their hands bunching their trousers up as the dirt splattered across their ankles. Their mother soon appeared and the children took off through the street as she chastised them, her raised voice decipherable even from this distance.

Despite living in the city her entire life, Dru had never truly experienced Denerim before. She grew up in a ghetto called the Alienage, where the elven people were strictly confined. Tall walls spared the humans from the horror of realising how privileged they were. Dru and her cousins used to scale the great Elder Tree at the centre of the alienage just to grab a glimpse of what they believed awaited them on the other side of those walls.

"You certainly look healthier."

Dru lunged to her feet, her knife in her hand and brandished at the intruder. Duncan didn't appear offended by the act as he pushed the door open with his boot. He held a motley of fabric and scabbards in his hands, all wrapped together by a brown cloak. He gently placed the items onto the bed, spreading them out individually. Dru didn't let go of the knife.

"Are those for me?" She glanced fleetingly at the items.

There was a cuirass made of cured leather, framed by chainmail along the arms and padded by fur beneath the pauldrons. Duncan set black trousers down beside it and a pair of knee-high leather boots that looked previously worn. Two scabbards were attached to a harness on the back of the cuirass. She wondered where he had gotten the money to procure the handsome items. She doubted the Grey Wardens were paid for their services.