lovingvambrace | For pavus

For pavus_redemit Kirkwall

The taste of ash lies thick in the air. For once something manages to overpower the foundry stench and blacken the perpetual orange of Kirkwall's night sky. Rubble lies massed in the streets, flung from the highest point to almost the lowest. Insanity and sudden chaos in the wink of an eye, a fateful explosion that has Cullen still blinking back blue lines, negative light impressions burned onto retinas.

Knight-Commander Meredith has left the Champion with an ultimatum that she not surprisingly doesn't take, murder her companion and choose their side, or the mages will all face the consequences. Hawke has vowed to fight to the bitter end to protect the mages of the Circle from the Right. Cullen privately hopes that she'll keep that word whether he agrees with her sparing of the abomination or not. This is all moving too fast with blame falling in the wrong quarter. The right answer isn't more blood. Meredith is implacable with all of them drawn along in her wake of righteous fury.

Cullen doesn't stay silent, arguing about the Champion. Surely arrest will be enough. Kirkwall's nobility won't stand for one of their grudging own being murdered by the arm of the Chantry. It isn't their place, Viscount or no Viscount in office. To his surprise, he earns concession on that front.

Then there is no more room for talking. They come upon their first wave of demons and abominations slaughtering unfortunates. The night turns red and black, a mist of blood and ichor. Cullen bashes his way through wave after wave of evil torn straight through the Veil, called by violence and horror. His sword arm burns. His shield feels as though it gains twenty pounds of its own volition, all of that before they reach the Docks District.

He hears a sound up toward the boarded up Qunari compound, more fighting. He peels away from the main force following Meredith, promising to catch up shortly, and runs up the steep steps. Breathless at the top, he sees flashes of fire past the barrier. He throws his weight behind his shield and bashes it in enough to gain entrance. A lone figure stands in the long abandoned plaza battling demons with magic and not an abomination himself. Without further thought, Cullen charges into the fray. "Aid behind you!" he shouts. He doesn't want to be mistaken for another enemy in the fight.

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The moment the dog goes mad the mages lay their mines. It will take the magic a moment to ready itself and luckily the Templars and Guards changing in keeps the camp distracted.

Dorian and the other mages keep to the back of the battle. He hurls ice towards feet and limbs, trying to slow the enemy as they scramble to close in. The other mages are also keeping to ice, barriers or spirit magic. He can see some of that Force magic that Kirkwall mages specialize in.

As the raiders begin to die he begins to feel the spirits gathering. It allows him to horrify the mabari in to silence. He's reluctant to summon the dead given how jumpy the raiders are. They could make some sort of signal if he panicked them enough.

He kept his focus on ice and silencing the dogs.

It's eerie to Cullen, how the snarling and baying gives way to whimpering and yelps. No matter how much he knows the war dogs are a threat, he can't help but to feel a small pang of regret that they were brought into this by bad people. He's Fereldan to the core in that respect. It doesn't stop him from keeping his head in his own battle.

That maul comes down on his shield hard enough to jar him all the way down through his shoulder and into his lower back. He tilts and deflects some of the blow, leaving himself an opening to plunge his sword tip up and through exposed lower jaw. The leader is done.

Most of the raiders are scattering, screaming and yelling only to get cut down by the archers watching for them. A few make the mistake of going for the cages and triggering the mines. It's chaos, blood and destruction, and a good example of how discipline in attack will almost always prevail, no matter how good any individual fighter may be.

It's over surprisingly quickly. "Kill the dogs," Cullen gives the order as soon as it's obvious the raiders are gone or soon to be finished where they lie. The fully trained hounds are no good to any of them, loyal to dead masters and a liability. Some of the guards are already stepping forward to secure the camp and check for valuables or anything of use on further raids that night.

This first foray hasn't cost them anyone and only minor injuries. They're fresh and were spoiling for the fight. Cullen knows it will get harder as the night goes on, when fatigue becomes a factor and word has chance to spread. All it will take is one escapee.

With the raiders dead the mages feel confident to take a look around the camp with the rest of the fighters. Dorian makes his way over to Cullen, taking a brief moment to look him over for injuries.

"I don't know if there are any camps close enough to hear what just happened," he says, "We kept the dogs as quiet as we could. Their barking would carry more than anything else."

He deliberately ignores the sounds of the dogs being put down. He's not a fan of the beasts but he still finds it unfair for them. They were good dogs with bad owners. Such a shame.

"Your archers didn't let anyone get past so as long as no one heard the fight we should continue our ambush without trouble."

"It's a consideration. If there are other camps with more Mabari it will be worse, because they'll know what was happening here and convey it to their masters in some way." That was always a risk in fights like this, something they couldn't prevent.

"This, however, went very well. Early victories are always good for morale." He doesn't look injured. The blood on him isn't his and much of it is soaked into the black tabard.

"I'm glad no one made it through. They foolishly chose a camp with only one access point. Not sure what they were thinking with that. I doubt all of them will be so sloppy." That's the other uncertainty with dealing with raiders. Sometimes they're uncouth, disorganized ruffians. Sometimes they're shrewd gangs with a multi-national presence and network that rivals the Coterie's. There's no way to know which is which on quick and dirty raids until the fighting starts.

"Let's get everyone back together. We can't linger." He claps him on the shoulder and steps past him to start rounding up the men. He only glances toward the cages to make sure no beast is left to suffer. Letting out a soft sigh, he moves on, mostly using hand signals to coordinate. They leave the fire burning. A sudden dousing would be more suspicious than just allowing it to burn out. Nine men and three women dead in less than an hour. It's not bad for a start, he thinks. The night beckons. They're off again.

Dorian is foolishly pleased by the praise and friendly clap on his shoulder. Praise, any sort of praise, really goes to his head. He's flushed with it, actually, just praise, nothing to do with the handsome man who delivered it.

"Oh, but it's such a lovely spot with all the corpses," he says with a wistful sigh. "You're certain we can't stay longer?"

He's already moving back towards the other mages. They will have the most trouble he imagines. None of them ever trekked like this or needed to. They were going to expend a great deal of mana as well. Dorian would have to keep their spirits high to keep them going.

He likes his dry humor, the look he cuts him saying as much. Once they're back out on the sandy path, he lets go of the previous encounter. It's over, and he wants to stay alert to their surroundings.

The first sign that something is amiss about half an hour later is the fact that all of the night insects have gone silent, not just near the path but in the further distance. The forward scout is visible on a rise in the path, suddenly stopping and swiveling his head to listen in the darkness. Cullen lifts a hand to stop the rest of the column, too.

A large blob of a shape with too many legs slams into the scout and disappears with him into the undergrowth so quickly he has no time to shout.

"Spiders!" Cullen shouts it instead. The undergrowth rustles loudly, then they're on them and in their midst, spraying sticky webbing and blobs of poison. One of them is bigger than a cow and frighteningly fast. It leaps directly onto Cullen and knocks him flat to the ground, slamming his air out of him in the process. Coughing and halfway dazed, he drags his shield up between his body and the spider's. He hears the scrape of sharp fangs over the metal and sees nothing but darkness.

A mage starts to scream before Dorian clamps a hand over her mouth. Giant spiders at night is terrifying but they cannot reveal their position even more than the spiders have.

"Cast and protect them," he hisses as he yanks his hand away.

This time Dorian is not careful about his magic. He's comfortable with necromancy and leashes a spirit right away to infect the biggest of the spiders. It will leech away life and eventually explode the beast when it takes possession.

He almost shouts Cullen's name when he sees the man go down. The other Templars and Guards are closer but Dorian rushes forward with the blade of his staff. He swings it around and slices clean through a leg. The staff spins around his body as Dorian using the momentum to bring it around and stab through the open wound where the leg used to be. He finishes the spider off by causing ice to explode from within it.

"Get up. You're a horrible shield lying on the ground like that," he snaps as he grabs Cullen's arm to haul him up.

It's dizzying to go from crushed under relentless weight to being sprayed in the face by icy mist that would be refreshing if it weren't so smelly. He's yanked up to his feet and tries to orient himself at the same time he forces air back into abused lungs.

"Thank you." It's gruff and forced, because he's still gasping, but already he has his sword out and is charging off again to rescue another templar from a grapple. He can see the gleam of poison on the man's sickened face. He stabs the spider and forcefully kicks it off the end of his sword. It skitters back with a strange, wheezy hiss. Cullen fumbles a precious potion from his sash, tears the cork out with his teeth, and pours it down his comrade's gullet. "Swallow. Swallow it now, or you'll never get up again." He keeps his shield between the two of them and the wounded spider, then takes his sword up again and charges.

It's nothing like their focused raid. The templars and guards keep as much discipline as they can, but this is the spiders' natural habitat, their hunting ground and time of most activity. They entangle some, poison others, and the poor scout isn't the only one to be dragged off into the sharp undergrowth never to be seen again.

"Don't die." Dorian has no idea why he feels so violently protective of this Southern Templar. He ignores the voice in the back of his head that tells him he knows exactly why. He's very good at ignoring that voice.

There are also giant spiders. Dorian builds a wall of ice between the mages and the spiders and then calls on the spirits of the dead. A spectral spider lunges at the living spiders and as soon as Cullen kills the second Dorian takes control of that one too.

He has a limited time with these spirits. He never enslaves them forever but it should be long enough to hopefully turn the tide.

It's not long enough. He hears a mage scream and can only watch as she is dragged in to the undergrowth. He actually freezes for a moment because he's never seen anyone he knew and cared for die before.

There's unrestrained ferocity in the way he throws himself against these beasts. Spiders know nothing of tactics or mercy. They're hungry killing machines that won't stop until killed themselves. Driving them off isn't an option. They'll only regroup and come back to attack from stealth again.

Cullen cuts webbing as well as chitinous shell, freeing other fighters or himself, crippling the enemy wherever he can. In no time at all, his limbs are screaming for more air, muscles on fire. His sword and shield grow heavier. It doesn't matter. All he can care about is finishing this.

By the time the last twitching spider flips to its back in a hideous death throe, they've lost three of their warriors, two of them templars, one a guard, their scout, and the mage. Many of them are sickened and groaning, a few limping away a small distance to retch in the bushes. All Cullen can think is there has to be a hole or a den nearby that was hidden well. It's not like any of the scouts to miss such a large gathering like that.

A sing-song voice in the distance has him narrowing his eyes. "Where are my pretties? They should be back by now. Did you find something tasty? Juicy? You should come to mother..."

The other templars immediately drop into battle formation and fan out, signaling the guards to stay but the mages to come. Whoever this is in the darkness is likely a mad apostate or abomination talking like that. They're better equipped to deal with that sort.

The anger Dorian feels that another mage has done this to their own is surprising. He doesn't usually get so... involved with things. The South is doing funny things to his emotions and he locks them down tight. Flying off the handle with spells is never a good way to cast anything.

The mages group up behind the Templars. Dorian keeps the most frightened ones towards the middle of the group. Some of them were hardened by the events in Kirkwall and those are the ones Dorian trusts to cast well and not at shadows.

As they draw closer to the voice Dorian feels a chill go up his spine. The Fade here feels wrong, thinner than it should be. There are spirits crossing over too easily.

"Mind your step," he says quietly. "Whoever this made is they've done something dark and dangerous."

A few of the templars are grumbling under their breath. They clearly want blood. Cullen silences them with an impatient chop of hand and nods to show Dorian he heard his warning. Whether it's his imagination playing tricks on him or not, even Cullen thinks he feels something strange in the area. The hair at the back of his neck is standing up, and there's a chill to the air that feels wrong.

The eerie voice is drawing closer. "Come on, my darlings. Mother hates to wait."

He strains his vision for any movement ahead. What he sees cresting the ridge about thirty yards distant doesn't make sense at first, an enormous, hulking shape, hunched and scurrying. Andraste preserve them all, it's the most monstrous spider he has ever seen, dwarfing the ones they faced on a level of several magnitudes. The tattered white shape in front of it resolves to a pale, thin woman dressed in dirty rags. There seems to be something wrong with her mouth, or it's just filthy. It and her eyes look like little more than holes in the washed out face.

The spider has clearly spotted them. It gathers its legs and leaps with frightening speed and agility, covering half of the distance between them in one go. "Hit it with everything you have!" Cullen yells. No more subtlety now. They can't afford it. Fire, lightning, whatever it takes. There's no sign of the strange woman now, but they don't have the luxury to seek her with this behemoth bearing down on all of them.

He was going to save the spell for when the party got tired fighting raiders but a spider the size of a high dragon has thrown itself at them and Dorian doesn't hold back.

With his magic he twists time itself, distorting the flow around the Templars and mages so that they moved faster. In comparison the spider seems incredibly slow even though it is a hulking monster of a thing. The spell takes all his focus, though, and he cannot cast anything else. One slip and time could twist in on itself and he will not be responsible for collapsing time.

"Make it count," he says to the mages around him. "Make it bleed."

They respond with all the have. Lightning, fire, ice, and everything else they can bring to bear goes flying around him trying to destroy the entirely too large to be natural spider.

It's the strangest effect. Had he not been warned of it ahead of time, he'd have thought he was going mad or experiencing some bizarre battle fugue. Instead, he takes as much advantage as he can, charging to close the rest of the distance and squinting against the exploding pyrotechnics threatening to destroy any hope of night vision. With the spider moving so slowly, he can see every horrible detail, the hairs on the legs as thick as thorns, the slow, glistening drip of venom from a curled fang longer than his forearm extending from a massive, swollen palp. He stabs for that first. If this thing bites any of them, it will be like taking a poisoned sword through the body. They'll be dead before they hit the ground.

Other shapes surge around him, his comrades at arms and the remaining guardsmen. They're slashing, frenzied killing machines. Two of them extend their two handed swords overhead and run under the monster to slice open the hideously distended abdomen. Cullen has to look away, slash at the other palp.

And then reality snaps back into real-time focus. The spider is horribly wounded but still fighting. It thrashes and kicks. It drops down hard on one of the men still under it. When it lifts, he remains still, limbs at awkward angles.

Worse, there's a voice rising above all of the sounds of combat. It's a voice he recognizes. Uldred. But that can't be! Did you think you'd escaped? Delusional man. You're still here. You've always been here. You always will be. You're ours. Walls closing in, a shimmering wall of purple, it's all an overlay to the enormous round black eyes of the spider, two of them nothing more than charred holes now.

Cullen can hear the men and women around him crying out in distress, screaming. Something is terribly wrong. Terribly, and then it hits him. "Fear demon! Focus! It's a Void touched fear demon!" The prison recedes. There's still the spider, slower now and clumsy but still a threat. And somewhere behind that massive bulk lies something even worse.

Time snaps back to normal and Dorian almost goes down on a knee. That spell always takes everything he has. The mages close ranks around him, protecting him as he struggles to get his senses back.

His father's voice comes to him, whispering in his ear. You are worthless. You shame your family.

"Demons, lovely," he grinds out through his teeth. He forces himself back up to his feet and spins his staff around to wield like a spear instead of a staff. He has no mana to draw on right now. "This is such a pleasant evening."

As long as he stays in the circle mages he should be safe. He wishes for his magic, though. It feels safer, better than a bladed stick but he stabs through openings between mages, slicing in to the demon when it comes close.

The spider is damaged enough that Cullen decides to leave it to the bulk of his people and the guards. He grabs the attention of his three most experienced remaining templars. "We have to help the mages! It's over there!"

The air distorts and flickers, revealing a spread of spindly limbs and a gliding, looming shape closing on the small group. "Smite it! Do it now!"

In rapid succession, four blinding white columns of light rain down on the demon with concussive force, temporarily cutting its connection to the Fade and sheering through its very essence. Its cloak drops away to reveal it in full. It tries to retreat into thick undergrowth.

Despite being dizzied after his effort, Cullen doggedly follows, as do the other three templars. He channels lyrium into his sword to whittle further away at its power with each blow. He can only hope the spider behind them doesn't rally or kill more of their people while they pursue this other threat.

Dorian has never felt a proper Templar smite before. When the four strike as one he feels the Fade seemingly disappear from that single spot in the world. He shudders to think how that must feel to the mages here. No wonder Templars are feared.

"Trap it between us!" Dorian calls above the noise.

Between the wall of metal and swords the Templars present and the magic the mages wield the demon should be destroyed in moments. Dorian keeps taking jabs and lashes out with the bladed end of his staff. His mana is returning slowly. He'll have magic to wield in moments but right now he's still better off with his staff.

They're an effective shield wall, the four of them. They drive the creature inexorably back toward the destruction raining down on it from the mages, each blow from their swords destroying its well of power. It goes down finally in a scream that sets Cullen's teeth on edge, and profound silence descends. After a few moments of getting his bearings he realizes it's not totally quiet. He can hear ragged breathing and moans from those who fought and the injured.

They're down a guard and two more templars, all lost to the now very dead giant spider. "Back to base," he says without hesitation. He points at the lightest and swiftest of the remaining templars. "Go back down the path. Coordinate with the other scout. Let the other group know what has befallen us. We should all fall back and send up the signal to the ships in the harbor it's called off."

He's angry and wondering how the scouts missed the abomination. They'll have to find out where it was holed up and where these damnable spiders came from. Not in darkness. They've had enough of that. Every nerve is frayed. He can see it on the pale faces around him. "Gather our fallen. We're not leaving them out here to become walking corpses." Of the ones hauled off into the undergrowth, he says nothing. They can't go running after bodies, not when they need to heal and regroup.

There's a moment when he can draw near Dorian in passing. He pauses and leans in. "That spell of yours made all the difference. There's no way we could have taken that spider down quickly enough not to double our losses."

And then he's gone again to lend his shield to the makeshift bier for the broken bodies they need to haul. A few potions pass hands. No one is bothering to heal up beyond what it will take to get them back to the camp. The battle surely called attention to them. They can only hope that it looked and sounded fearsome enough to discourage unhealthy curiosity.

It's the mages that set about helping to collect the dead and build the pyre. Dorian stays out of it. He's exhausted from casting and even Cullen's praise can't really lift his spirits.

He's never been part of a battle before. He doesn't like the feeling it leaves him with. He feels guilty over the deaths and angry they couldn't do more. He couldn't do more before his mana ran out. Even though he did everything he could and logically he knows that it's not the most satisfying feeling.

It leaves him quiet and contemplative as they walk back to camp with their dead. His mind is racing though, going over each second of the battle and his spell casting. He must get better, he has to if he's going to stay with these people. He wants to stay with these people. It feels like he's doing something good.

Reforming Tevinter can wait a bit longer. Maybe reforming Kirkwall can be his start.

Once they're back at camp, those who remained behind spring into action the moment they see them and realize something went wrong. They force the injured off their feet to tend them, low, murmured conversations about what happened, how no one saw it coming.

Cullen stays on his feet and remains a presence until everything that can be done while they wait for the other group has been. Only then does he go to sit off to the side and work on starting to clean himself up. The ichor from the spiders and the demon is more corrosive than blood. He removes his gauntlets and gets to work on the joints and rivets with oil and a polishing cloth. It takes his mind off the failure and gives him time to consider how they'll proceed the next day. The dead scout has already paid the ultimate price for carelessness. He was the one in charge of the main route tonight. Cullen considers the demon could have had something to do with it, confusing him, addling him, making him forget. He can't ask him now.

He sighs heavily and leans in closer to the fire the better to see. It has been a humbling reminder that the best laid plans don't always save lives and that outside the walls of Kirkwall are every bit as deadly as what remains within. He hates the Free Marches more by the day.

At the camp he watches the guards and the mages build pyres together. Normally, he would be proud to see that sort of cooperation but it feels hollow tonight. He watches them light the fire before he turns away.

He goes off by himself with his staff. The familiar steps of cleaning the blade, polishing out chips and cleaning the wood soothes some of his mind. He'll have to practice more when he returns to Kirkwall and somehow learn to accept that he failed. Dorian doesn't like to fail. He hates it. The memory of his father's voice is too fresh.

Muttering a Tevinter curse he sets his staff down and stares off in the distance, scowling deeply. His eyes land on Cullen who is tending to his armor. He doesn't look happy about this either. He is fond of the man, he really is, and he doesn't know what to do about that. He's fond of these people but not in the same way. His foolish heart once again trying to get him in trouble.

Cullen is at the cleaning for a long time, even after the other party returns. Aveline crosses to him. They exchange several low words. By the time she leaves his side, she looks grim but not particularly angry.

There comes a time his hands are too tired to hold the metal. He has stripped out of and cleaned much of it. He'll get to the rest after a break. Wringing and rubbing at them, he spots Dorian off away from the others. He rises to join him and sits down heavily, close but not touching.

"I've heard stories of spiders that big." He begins without preamble. "It's my first time seeing one. It's rare for them ever to leave the caves that spawn them. That demon must have drawn it out."

"Demons don't draw out, they take over," he corrects, his tone like a lectures. "The demon used them like tools. Most animals will run from demons. They seem to sense how... corrupt they are."

He sighs heavily and shakes his head. No need to dwell on that or giant spiders. He knows it's going to be a rough night for the mages with the Veil corrupted like it is.

"What did the Guard Captain want?" he asks, hoping to change the subject. He's had enough of spiders and demons.

He grunts softly. He has very little interest in how demons do what they do. He knows what the results were. It's not something that will leave his mind easily any time soon. Deaths on his watch never do.

"She wanted to know how her men died." It had been an entirely fair question. He lifts a hand to rub at the side of his temple. He has been fighting a headache for a couple of hours now.

"We're going to comb that area tomorrow and find out where it was holed up. There could be more of them, either abominations or spiders. If we leave them here to work their evil or breed, this will just happen again, if not to one of our patrols possibly to other innocents." Or it would happen to raiders. That's not a good enough excuse to leave it alone.

"Were you injured?" He seems to really look at him for the first time since coming over. He feels oddly responsible for him, no matter how much he rebuffs it or gets prickly whenever he suggests it. He can't help it.

The academic knowledge helps settle Dorian's mind. If he can understand something intellectually he can work out how to fix it or fight it.

"I'll see which mages are willing to come with," he says with a sigh. "Some of them are quite shaken. The abominations from the night we met are still fresh in their minds." He would come, of course, and help destroy any traces of blood magic.

He shakes his head. "Merely tired from expending so much mana. A lyrium potion and a good night's rest I will be fine."

For pavus_redemit Kirkwall

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