My Warden (COMPLETED)

Baths

Freezing water poured down her exposed back as the she-devil dumped a second bucket. "Stop. Doing. That!" Lana gritted through chattering teeth. She hopped back and forth on her bare feet, splashing more mud against her frozen skin.

"I'm done with the first round of rinsing. Now we need to be getting to the scrubbing. Here!" The horrendous creature who tried to pass for human hurled a bar of soap over the wooden wall of the hastily assembled bath house. It bounced off Lana's shoulder and scattered to the grass. Unable to bend over in such a tight space, Lana bent her knees and hunted the soap out blindly. It was cheap for certain, the smell of lye overpowering and it looked like some gravel worked its way into the mix.

Sighing, Lana tried to lather the bar against her frozen skin but the soap was in no mood. The best it could bother were a few bubbles before giving up the ghost entirely and leaving a slimy film down her flesh. She did get a lovely abrasion down her stomach from the gravel though.

"This soap is impossible," Lana sighed. She chucked it back over the partition at the woman's head.

The creature from beyond the void caught it in one hand and threw the soap into a bucket. The ringing caused the nearby horses to whinny from their beds, stamping and snorting at the mage who kept shrieking during their afternoon feeding. It also pulled even more attention from wandering soldiers to the woman being bathed in the midst of their stables. And to think Lana once thought Leliana was too sweet for her own good. She should have listened closer to Marjoline.

The she-beast unearthed a brush as long as her arm and drug it across Lana's back. It had to be made from unfinished nails pounded into the back of a splintered log. Lana shrieked and leapt a good foot in the air, almost causing her to pop out of the top of the parturition. "What are you doing?!"

"Scrubbing you, as I was ordered to do," the woman sighed, tired of her victim questioning her torture tactics.

Lana tried to whip around to see her own back. It had to be bloodied meat after that attack, but all her fingers found were raised welts and a few misplaced suds. "You shall not touch me with that ever again. Do you understand?" Lana dampened the fire in her voice and tried to dip into her commanding presence. It completely failed on the washer woman.

"Listen, I don't know who you think you are, but around here I do as I'm told. You might want to learn that too unless you want to get kicked back to wherever they found you," the woman sneered. She gripped the brush tighter and aimed to rake up more of Lana's flesh.

The mage reached into the fade and wrapped her skin in stone, the bristles pinging as they struck. Trying a few more times to smash into Lana's skin, the woman sighed, "Take off that damn unholy magic."

"No!" Lana shouted feeling like a petulant child but also in no mood for healing her own back.

"I'll go and get a templar, he'll do you up a right treat and then you'll get your what-for," she threatened, banging the brush against Lana's skin. Even through the rock armor, she could still feel it knocking into her. Twisting her anger into mana, Lana threw a fist from the fade into the brush. It flew up out of the woman's hands and smashed against the ground with enough force to bury itself into the dirt. Lana glowered at the woman while she removed her stone armor, but the woman remained unimpressed.

"Look at what you did. Now I'll have to wash it, then wash you."

"It will not touch me!" Lana screamed, the pounding in her head matched by the throb of her skin. The woman wasn't about to give up either, the two ready to come to blows or worse when a new voice joined in the fray.

"Is there a problem here?" Sweet Andraste! Lana sunk lower from that voice, curling her arms around her naked flesh while crumpling into a ball. Out of all the impromptu stable washings in all of thedas, he had to stroll into this one. She placed her ear against the wooden wall while keeping the rest of her hidden from view.