He let her sentence trail off. Hope seemed to be the prevailing theme for the day. For his part, Ellion was just glad to be alive. He had escaped death and hellish situations one too many times just to be crushed in a tunnel, thank you very much. He started after her, dust puffing out of his clothes and boots with every step. As if being coated in toxic blood wasn't bad enough. He coughed and spat quietly all the way to the water, at which point he stripped down with just as little regard as her.<br/><br/>Ell was quick to step into the water and dunked his head, both hands scrubbing hard at his hair as a cloud of dirt came drifting off and out. When he surfaced he kept it up, rubbing every part of himself until his skin was pink and just a bit tender but bereft of any of the tunnel's dirt. Once his body was clean he sat on the shore and worked on his clothes, boots and pants and long-sleeved tunic alike. Wet clothes weren't ideal, but he was already going to have to replace some of them once they reached the town. He realized that when he dunked his tunic, lifted it out of the water, and watched both sleeves drift away in the current. "Oh. Okay, then. Great." The darkspawn blood had burnt right through the cotton.<br/><br/>The sight made him grimace, and he touched a scar on his shoulder, one that hadn't been there in the days before. He had hoped to never have to encounter the Darkspawn again, that Denerim would be his first and last true encounter with the blighted monstrosities, yet here he was. Him, and a girl--no, a woman now--that had either ruined his life, or completed it. His eyes closed as he struggled again with the memories.<i>Are you coming with me? You have been COMPROMISED, ser. Which one's true? Was I compromised? Was it blood magic?<br/>
</i><br/>His eyes opened and he looked in her direction just in time to catch her coming out of the water, her smallclothes wet and clinging to her body. Woman, indeed. He had the decency to look away quickly, and stood to start pulling on his pants. Curious, how much harder it got when the fabric was wet. "So," he said as he finally got them up over his hips, "I assume by town, you meant Redcliffe itself? If so, we should get moving. I don't think there's much daylight left." He picked up his sword and drew it halfway to check the metal, but it was clean and untouched, the elf-forged blade as self-efficient as it had always been. He strapped it on tight around his hips and got to work with his boots and now-sleeveless tunic, which felt utterly ridiculous once he had it on.<br/><br/>A tunic without sleeves. He felt like some kind of Free Marcher.