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"Alright." Maybe if they're lucky they can get to the ruins without running into any darkspawn even without a sign.

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Unfortunately they are not that lucky.

"Darkspawn ahead. About two dozen. Carlos, Jago, if you have protective spells, now would be the time to use them. Shiral, see to their archers; you did well with that last time. A group this size may also have a mage. If so, I will deal with it."

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"Wouldn't it be better to have one of us deal with the mage?" Jago wonders.

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"Not necessarily. I will explain when we are not about to be ambushed."

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"Okay." Warding glyphs are a protective spell, those can get cast.

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And then the darkspawn attack. Four archers, three in a cluster and one off to the side; and one mage, as predicted.

Ambrose is not a flawless prodigy like Shiral, but he's competent and experienced and for some reason the mage seems to have trouble affecting him. Maybe that was a really good warding glyph.

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The flawless prodigy picks off the lone archer at range and then closes on the remaining three. A pair of melee fighters get in her way. They are out of her way soon afterward.

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...Is Ambrose...? That could potentially explain a lot and also raise further questions.

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Tev still has approximately no idea what he's doing, but he's starting to figure it out. And in the meantime he doesn't have a whole lot of trouble holding off ten darkspawn singlehandedly while everyone else engages them in smaller groups.

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It's over pretty quickly.

"To answer your earlier question," says Ambrose, turning to Jago, "firstly, combat of mage against mage is less straightforward than it might seem, and it can be better to approach a mage with an experienced warrior than an inexperienced mage; secondly, before Duncan found me I was in training to be a templar. I prefer the Wardens, but as I just demonstrated, the skills I learned with the templars have their uses."

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"That explains how you knew so much about mages, back at the Circle." He can't quite think of a polite way to say, "but if you were a Templar, why do you give a damn about us."

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He nods. "Yes."

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"So why do you prefer the Wardens?" wonders Tev, cleaning his enormous sword.

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"Darkspawn are a real and important problem to which the Wardens are, as far as I can tell, the best solution available. Demons and blood mages are also a real and important problem, but the Circles and the Templars are, if not quite the worst solution I can imagine, at least uncomfortably close to it."

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"One of the greatest reasons I have to regret leaving the Circle is that I was good at shielding the apprentices from the attention of the Templars' and those senior mages sympathetic to them."

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Ambrose nods sympathetically.

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"I'm sorry to hear it. The alienage didn't have that problem, but--I helped deal with troublemakers back home, both internal and external. I trust the people I left behind to take care of it, though. If you don't have that--it's sad."

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"Warden Ambrose," says Shiral, "are there any living darkspawn nearby?"

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"Not that I can tell, although with this many dead it can be hard to say for sure. Why?"

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"We are being followed."

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"Well, if it's darkspawn, presumably it lacks the subtlety to not just charge in and attack us."

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"Unless it is a spy personally sent by the Archdemon."

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"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," says Ambrose. "Some people who aren't darkspawn do live in these woods."

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"And they're not dead?"

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