My Warden (COMPLETED)

Stairs

Lana kept a close eye on the maps while Cullen was supposed to keep an eye on the trail. The fact he could not find this imaginary path only aided in him smashing his boot through every tree, puddle, and rabbit burrow along the way. "You have no idea where you're going," he chided himself as he plunged calf deep into a hole. Mud suckered up while he sneered at his bad luck.

But it was Solana who answered, "No, I've got a fairly good handle. That pile of rocks there, the white ones. I think they were part of the old temple from before the second blight. One of those pagan ones later altered into an Andrastian pre-chantry, then burnt down during an exalted march years after."

Cullen only saw vines and moss sprawled across a lumpy hill, but he had no reason to doubt her, she was the grey warden. "Do you do this often?"

"Chase down blood mages?" she asked, her face buried in the map. After a moment, she pointed towards the east and nodded her head. "I'm not a templar."

"No, I know. You couldn't be a..." he tried to rise up from his stuck boot and sighed. His leg refused to budge. "Hunting for entrances to the deep roads long lost. I wondered if this is part of the average grey warden duties."

"Ah," she smiled and rolled up the precious maps into the pack slung across her back. "A grey warden's job is to stop blights. Which means I peaked rather early in my career, I suppose." She stepped close to Cullen, her body so near the wind ruffled the hem of her robe onto him. His heartbeat picked up from the heat of her inches away.

"That's a shame," Cullen squeaked out. He snapped his teeth to try and hide the ecstatic terror building at the back of his brain. What was she doing?

"Truly. So, some of my sunset years involves traveling across the land, finding darkspawn, following them to their filthy holes, and destroying them." Her tone was stark and dry, but her eyes sparkled in a dangerous mischief. Lifting half her smile, Lana dropped to her knees. His hands reached for her shoulders to raise her out of the mud and to stop her from... Maker, whatever she was doing, it could not be that. Cullen swallowed a squeak when her fingers grasped around his calf and she began to yank upwards. Andraste's tears, of course. If the blood mage or the darkspawn didn't end him on this trip, his runaway mind would. Together they worked to unstick him from the mud.

"You don't send some of your underlings to do that?" he gritted through his teeth, trying to distract from the awkwardness blooming up his cheeks. To even think that, no, it was only a passing...Maker, when did it get so warm? His boot erupted from the sinkhole, the ground popping in rage from losing its toy.

Lana held out her hand and Cullen took it, helping her rise. Her robes were filthy, the knees down to her feet coated in mud and moss. She paid it no mind as she grabbed up her staff. "Sinkholes are a good sign."

"To predators looking for an easy meal," Cullen grumbled.

"It means the ground is weak, and where the ground is weak an entrance to the deep roads is near. Come on, should be just past that hill."

Lana strode ahead of him as she always did. On occasion she'd bang the end of her staff into the ground, listening to the noise. After a few steps and bangs, she resumed their earlier conversation. "I don't like the idea of sitting on a throne. I made a lot of sacrifices to be what I am, and I don't want to waste them."

"I never--" Cullen began, but Lana gasped and ran up the hill away from him, her lighter steps making the climb much easier than his. He gritted his teeth and, not as excited about the fragile ground, took each step with more caution. The last thing he wanted was to force her to have to fish him out of a sinkhole by the waist. As he rounded up the hill, Lana waved her hands over a cavity dug so deep into the earth to render it essentially bottomless. Packed mud around the entrance gave way to rock chiseled away from the earth after five feet down into the pit. Further than that was inky blackness, an ominous fog drifting atop the impenetrable bottom. The hole was a good twenty feet in diameter, more where the rock cleaved away from the mountain like a cracked bone. Rotted boards were nailed up by a blind man working off the instructions of a deaf man to create a staircase for giants. The staircase circled around the edges of the pit, down into the depths beyond sight -- at least what parts of the stairs that hadn't fully succumb to time and their poor craftsmanship. Cullen tried to see to the bottom but could only spot a hint of a wood pile hundreds of feet below them. That must be where the stairs went to die.