The next thing she hears is one of the other girls repeating, "Maker keep us, Maker protect us, Maker keep us, Maker protect us," in a high frightened whisper while rocking back and forth nearby.

She's on a stone floor in what looks like some kind of storage room, surrounded by the other girls who were taken for the lord's 'party'. No one looks hurt, yet.

...Wow. She was sure they would kill her. They're seriously that hard-up for a fuck?  Or, no, probably want to humiliate her before she dies, gang-rape her and then kill her.

Whatever. Leaving her alive is a mistake they would come to regret, soon enough. "Is everyone okay?" she asks groggily, taking stock of the situation.

"Oh, thank the Maker you've come to," Shianni says. "We were so worried."

"I'm fine. What happened since I was knocked out?"

"They took us to the arl's palace," Shianni says, "and locked us up in here to wait, until..."

"Maker keep us, Maker protect us, Maker keep us, Maker protect us..."

"Now this again," Shianni mutters, rolling her eyes.

The terrified muttering girl continues her terrified muttering.

"Look," says one of the other girls, "we'll... do what they want... go home, and try to - forget this ever happened."

"That's not going to happen," Acara says with an icy-rage serenity. "I already killed at least one of them, maybe two. I'm not going to get out of this in one piece, not if these bastards have anything to say about it. And the door is a chokepoint. I'll kill the first one that comes through, take his sword, and then the rest will be easier." She shrugs. "And if that fails, well, I died faster than I'm sure they were going to let happen, and you still have the option to cooperate if you want."

...the girl who suggested cooperating shrinks away nervously.

"Maker keep us, Maker protect us," mutters the terrified one.

And then there's a noise at the door.

"Someone's coming!" says the last, quietest girl.

Acara darts over to the door and grips the handle firmly, ready to smash it back in the face of whoever opens it.

A helmeted guard opens it!

He is not expecting a door to the face. He stumbles back, cursing.

And she grabs his sword from where it hangs and then he does not have a sufficiently intact throat to curse with.

The other guards behind him yell an alarm and press the attack.

She took down two guards barehanded back in the alienage, now she has a sword, and she controls the doorway. It does not remotely resemble a fair fight.

When it's over she looks down at her blood-drenched dress and makes a moue of annoyance. It was such a nice dress, too.

The cooperative girl and the quiet girl are clinging to each other in fear in the back of the storage room. The terrified muttering one is cowering next to them, shaken out of her trance.

There are no more guards immediately in evidence; they must not have succeeded in summoning help.

...Hm. To stay here and protect them, or to slaughter her way to Vaughan Kendells.

Her musings are interrupted by the arrival of her cousin.

"Soris! What are you doing here?"

"Nelaros lost it on the people who wanted to just--hope for the best. I couldn't let him come alone."

"Perfect. You stay here and guard Shianni and the others while I go gut the arl's son like the pig he is."

"...Nelaros is at the end of the hall, he's expecting us--"

"I'll explain it to him. Maybe form a barricade, too--oh, you've got a sword already, that's good."

"That Grey Warden, Duncan, loaned us his sword and crossbow, but that's all we have."

"Okay, then I'll need to bring Nelaros some weapons from the dead guards. Good to know."

"But--"

"Soris? Stay here and make sure Shianni and the others are alright. I'll take care of it."

"...Okay. Thanks, cousin."

"I love you. Be okay," she says, and heads out.

There are a few off-duty guards drinking in the dining hall that she has to pass through to get to Nelaros. Two of them stand up when they see Acara come through the door in her blood-soaked wedding dress.

"Hey! Where'd you get weapons, elf?"

"From the corpses of your compatriots. I just killed five of them by myself, without a sword, and now I have several, do you really want to join them?"

"Not me, I'm off-duty," says the seated man, taking a bite of bread.

The other two don't seem to believe her. They attack.

Fine. What's two more dead shemlen matter to her. They can die as messily as their friends. She wipes her blades on the less-bloody parts of their clothes, nods perfunctorily at the guard who didn't make her kill him, and leaves. Soris said Nelaros was at the end of the hall...

The seated guard nods back. He doesn't seem to mind at all about his friends.

She reaches the room at the end of the hall just in time to watch another guard cut Nelaros nearly in half with a blow to the chest.

No--

She crosses the hall in a heartbeat, decapitates the guard, and falls to her knees at the other elf's side. "Nelaros?"

Nelaros's eyes focus briefly on her face. He blinks slowly.

Then he's gone.

A drop of water falls onto his face. No, that's a tear.

Why is she crying? She didn't know him, he was a stranger to her--but he was her fiance, and he--he had died trying to save her and Shianni and the others, and that mattered.

But there would be time to cry later. For now she would quickly rifle through his pockets for any keepsakes she could give back to his family, since she likely wouldn't get a chance later, and then she could get up and keep moving.