He picks her up carefully to carry her. "There's a flower I need for this that I don't have," he tells his recruits and Elissa. "It has red and white petals; red in the center and white on the outside. I need them cut, not uprooted, and one is the minimum but three would be best."

"All right, time to go flower-hunting."

"Yeah," Acara agrees.

Duncan hoists the Dalish elf and starts walking.

Elissa looks for flowers. Seb helps. They find a few growing not far off the path.

Acara finds one a little upstream.

They don't have an indication of how much farther they have left to go until a Dalish elf appears out of the woods, armed and armored.

"Is that Shiral?" she asks. "What happened?"

"She was attacked by darkspawn," Duncan says. "Before that, we don't know. But she has the Taint. I can save her, but I need your Keeper's help.

The guard's eyes flick nervously across the group for a few moments before conceding. "This way," she says. She leads them into a Dalish encampment. The keeper is a grey-haired woman with extensive facial tattooing.

Duncan explains what needs to happen to the Keeper.

Tev asks, "Is there anything else we can do to help?"

They can help the Keeper brew the thing. Her apprentice will help her with the magic parts, but extra hands to hold things and stir things will be very helpful.

So they do that.

The brew is finished within an hour, and then magic things happen, and then that is all they can do for her.

At some point during all this fuss she must have gone from mostly unconscious to actually unconscious. She stays that way for a while.

Well. There's nothing to be done about it until and unless she wakes up.

Oh look she's awake.

"There you are," Duncan says. "What do you remember?"

"Caves... My friend Tamlen. There were ruins in the caves, and a tainted bear. Darkspawn chasing us. There was a mirror. Tamlen couldn't look away from it. I tried to carry him out of the room, but I collapsed."

"...Your friend. I'm sorry," Duncan says. "If I had known about him I would have tried to find him. It's--too late, now."

"I tried to tell you but I blacked out first."

"I'm sorry."

She nods.

"How did they get you?"

"I was unconscious at the time, but they must have found us in the caves and hauled us away. I woke up when you started killing them."

He nods. He frowns. "What can you tell me about the mirror you mentioned before?"

"It was very tall, with an ornate frame, in the middle of a round room in the deepest part of the ruins. The ruins were decorated in a mix of human and elven styles. Tamlen knows a few words of written elvish; he was trying to read the inscriptions on the frame when the mirror caught him, and then he couldn't move."

"Can you show me where it is, once you can move? I believe I know what it is, and if I am correct, it is a terrible and tainted thing."

"I could show you now, if you carried me there."

"I can do that," he says.