No longer staring straight ahead, Ordhan's gaze moved to the elf when he took out the pendant. It was puzzling that the elf kept it with him; it was a trinket that would fetch little price, if any. It was even more puzzling that he set it aside. A jab of foolish relief welled up. Ordhan had never thought the holy pendant had protected him, as some of his fellow knights did, but it felt like a sin to lose it.
Ordhan's eyes widened as the elf began to leave. Abandoning composure, he called out. "Wait! Stop! Wait!" The other took no heed, bowing with a flourish as he made his parting remarks. The door was shut as swiftly as it had opened, leaving Ordhan in the dusty dimness with the spots of absent light dancing across his eyes. Adrenaline rushed in like a tide. It churned furiously in his sluggish brain as his hands strained at the ropes that bound them, and his feet shifted and struggled. He swung and bobbed at the end of the rope like a fishing lure.
He did not stop for what seemed like hours. The dusty light seeping through the rafters had faded, leaving a smothering gloom. The bindings on his wrists were no looser than before. By the wetness running down to his elbows, he had tried too hard. The adrenaline had faded, leaving a nauseous fatigue in its wake. Ordhan hung, dazed and spent, blackness deeper than the night eating at the corners of his vision.
He could imagine that the inexistent moonlight caught the pendant below, and his blurring gaze fastened upon it. Maker, my enemies are abundant. Many are those who rise up against me. But...my faith sustains me; I...
When he cracked open his eyes again there was sunlight once more. His feet had no feeling and his head felt as if it were being crushed between a Qunari's hands. Maker, he was thirsty. He took a deep breath--it felt like something was pressing against his chest to keep him from it--and called out. "Hello? Can anyone hear me?" His roughened voice echoed in the warehouse, taunting him with the ghosts of answering cries. "Help! Please!" Ordhan called out again, and again, voice hoarser by the moment. Whoever would hear him in this part of Denerim would certainly not want to help, but at the moment a slit throat seemed a better fate than however long it would take him to fade like this. Even that mercy was not granted to him. The only answers were the rebounds of his own cries, which dwindled into silence when he gasped for breath.
The light departed again, and again it returned. Sometimes Ordhan struggled, opening fresh wounds on his wrists, sometimes he shouted with a parched and frantic voice. The rest of the time he hung in silence, unfocused eyes on the pendant. Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide. I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond. For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light, and nothing that He has wrought shall be lost.