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It had been arduous hours already exploring the ruined temple that Genitivi had led them to, unsure even what they would find when they got to... wherever they were going. It certainly hadn't helped when the Warden leading their small party had changed her mind just as they had reached an important-looking door, deciding she suddenly thought the left side of the fork they had left half a mile back was actually the one that felt more promising, trust me, everyone, I'm Dalish, we have good instincts out of necessity, I know my directions.
"If your instincts are so superior to those of us mere humans, why did we not simply take this other route in the first place," Morrigan had muttered. Unsurprisingly, her complaint went cheerfully ignored, as they often did.
The trip back to the fork took significantly less time than the trip away from it had. Less tripping over debris in the dim lighting, and less tripping over the cultists who were so rudely seeking their death. Everything that might have stopped them or delayed them had already been killed, destroyed, or kicked bitterly off to the side out of the path. Or all of those things, in the case of some of the more challenging cultists.
It made for an unpleasant but unsurprising development when the left pathway contained even more cultists intent on the blood of the Warden's party staining the stone floor beneath them, jumping out of the abundance of deep shadows cast by crushed stone and mineral buildup to shoot spells or arrows, or to run up to them and attempt to chop their heads off with a blade or two. By the time they reached the room containing a suspicious lack of hostile lifeforms and an even more suspicious presence of four glittering, well-decorated chests, the arguable excitement of fighting the cultists was starting to wear off for everyone.
Everyone except the Warden, anyway. She certainly never seemed to run out of small, barely-there smiles lingering on the corners of her mouth whenever she had an excuse to swing her absurdly large greatsword around at whatever fool had decided it was a healthy idea to rush her.
The usual small curl of her lips became greater when she saw the chests.
"See? What did I say," she gloated, turning to direct her smile at Morrigan's scowl. "There's bound to be something useful in these. Else, why would they be crowded in this room together like this?" She paused, then lowered her voice, "Or at least, something we can sell or trade for something useful." She turned to Leliana, lurking quietly towards the back of their party. "Could my favorite lock-picker take a quick glance at these?"
Leliana stepped up around Morrigan, her footsteps joining the creaking of Alistair's armor from his idle movements to echo clearly around the silent room. Ten feet from the nearest chest, her eyebrows lowered and her lips thinned, and she came to a stop. "There's no lock on that chest. Seems odd." She turned to look at another of the chests, a few feet further from her. "That one appears to be the same. Are the others...?"
"This one's locked," Alistair said from off to the side of the room. He reached out an armored foot to prod gingerly at the chest. Nothing strange happened.
A high-pitched noise came from the Warden's mouth. "Oh, I love it when I don't need help from you or Zevran to open these things!" She walked quickly towards the chest Leliana hadn't quite reached, the sound of metal scraping stone making its way around the room when she knelt in front of it, her sword stretching out in an awkward angle where it touched the floor behind her. "You can start on the locked one, Leli-love."
"Er, dear," Leliana hesitated, eyeing the chest her Warden was sitting in front of, fumbling armored fingers over the bare latch, "do you perhaps think I should just go ahead and open all of them? It seems a bit... suspicious... to have these all so open and tempting. You know I know something of temptation-" oh how glad she was that Zevran wasn't with them at the moment to twist her words, "-and of course I also know something of trap detection-"
The click of an undone latch and the screech of an ash wraith was Leliana's answer.
Of course, an ash wraith at this point in their long, long journey posed almost no challenge to speak of. However, something not being a challenge didn't mean it didn't also take work. Work, and bruises. Perhaps some mild burns as well that most of them would have rather avoided.
When a final freeze spell from Morrigan encouraged the wraith to collapse into a layer of dust on the floor, Leliana was already absently reaching into her pocket for something to put on the reddened skin on her collarbone where the wraith had gotten a bit too close. She was not, therefore, paying attention to her Warden, and when Alistair started to shout, "Wait, what are you do-" she looked up just in time to see her infuriating lover release the latch on the next lockless chest, her sword held at the ready in her other hard.
This one, to nearly everyone's despair, contained two ash wraiths.
"That was foolish," Leliana told her when the second wraith had again appeared to melt into the floor below. She winced at the feeling of a second burn on her ear next to some singed hair. "Why did you open that- oh dear, what are you doing?"
The Warden had started towards the third unlocked chest. "Well, we don't truly know what's going to be in it, do we?"
"You're mad," Morrigan informed her calmly. "Why the bard puts up with you, I'll never understand."
"Oh, stop acting like you're scared of a little ash wraith," the Warden said, stopping in front of the chest and turning to grin at Morrigan. "Don't worry, I believe in you."
Leliana sighed, and Alistair said, "You know, I don't understand Morrigan on even the best of days, but I get this strange feeling that she isn't worried about the wraiths. I think it's more-"
Too late. The Warden turned back around and flipped the clasp with even more speed than the last two. To no one's surprise, the hissing of ash wraiths quickly filled the room.
"Dear," Leliana said in a sickly sweet voice when the last wraith collapsed, "I'm very displeased with you right now."
A sugary smile was Leliana's answer. That infuriating, beautiful smile, and an expectant gaze.
"...No," she said when she realized what her Warden wanted from her. "No. That's enough. I'm sick to death of ash wraiths burning my skin and my hair and my shoes. If you want to open that last chest so badly, do it yourself."
"You know I can't," the Warden said, her voice not quite edging into a whine. "I've none of your delicate touch. My hands are far too clumsy and covered in metal. Your positively delightful fingers, on the other hand, oh the magic they can work, the things they can do-"
"Is this something we should be hearing?" Alistair wondered aloud at no one in particular, a disgusted snort from Morrigan sounding in a rare agreement.
The pink on Leliana's face might have been explained away by the chill of the stone and snow, if an observer were to be in a generous mood. "Yes, well... that was my point!" she said. "I don't really want either of us opening that chest."
The Warden blinked rapidly in a way that was probably supposed to be her batting her eyelashes at Leliana, but made her look far more like she had a speck of something in one of her eyes. She took a few steps towards Leliana. "Oh please, Leli? The others didn't have locks on them, so this one probably has something actually decent in it."
"Or a more dangerous creature that needed to be locked in," Leliana countered, her voice weakening. She often admired her love's firm ways, her resoluteness, but it was times like these she despaired at the trouble it often got them into. She was just so stubborn.
The Warden took the last few steps separating her from Leliana, then reached over and took her hand, careful not to pinch her bare and chilly fingers between metal joints. She stroked the back of Leliana's hand, turned it over to run her thumb over her palm, and turned her smile upwards to meet Leliana's eyes. "What if it's something important? What if it's directions to the Ashes? A map? Instructions on a trap we might encounter later on? Some explanation for why this cult is here?" She stroked faster. "Or what if it's something expensive? What if it's a bar of gold? An old religious relic we could return to that Chantry you love so much?" She lowered her voice, doing her best to make it sound enticing. "What if it's a pair of pretty shoes?"
"Oh dear," Leliana sighed. She turned her cheek towards her lover to receive the expected thank you kiss on the unburnt side of her face, then pulled her hand away and walked towards the chest, ignoring Morrigan's harsh laugh.
Leliana reached into a slot in her waistband that she had designated for her lock picks. She touched them to the lock, hesitated, put them down, and pulled out one of her daggers and set it next to her, within easy reach should she need to drop the picks in a hurry. She retrieved the picks and reluctantly began to poke at the lock.
A far longer than usual amount of time later, a click echoed around the quiet room. A clanking behind Leliana as she pulled the lock free of the loops of metal it had been passed through told her the Warden had come up to stand behind her. She set the lock down, tucked her picks away, and clutched her dagger in her favored hand as she reached down to lift the lid of the chest.
A single tiny jar sat neatly in the middle of the large chest, surrounded by nothing else, patiently waiting for them.
"Oh hey!" the Warden said as she pushed past Leliana to snatch the jar out of the chest. "Warmth balm! This will come in handy if we need to fight any more ash wraiths, eh, Leli?"
Leliana scrunched her eyes shut and began weighing the pros and cons of weeping.