Perhaps it was only to Gil, perhaps it was merely the after effect of that last bit of magic exploding too near and too loud, but as he stood with a suddenly too heavy sword in his hands and archdemon blood over a once brilliantly shining suit of armor, the world seemed to quiet down. He thought to himself, even as he heard the darkspawn shrieking somewhere far away, that there was no sound that would separate the dead from the living.
Perhaps the line is yet too frail even at this point, he mused, and turned to watch a creature run towards him - past him - keep running and fall into that burning cauldron that he remembered as once a city. One dead crazed high dragon, and its tainted subordinates fleeing blindly. The soldiers staring silently after them could be either alive or dead, it seemed chance was yet to make good upon the dead being dead, and the living could not yet muster the care.
A blister, he realized as he looked down on his hands. Beneath his right glove, just were the ring finger met the palm. And pain! Such pain! It chafed like small rock under his skin.
"I've got a blister," he said to Wynne, who seemed to be quite frantic about something. "On my palm, right here."
"Oh, you," the senior enchantress snapped. "You could have told us!"
Gil, blister, sword and all, was pulled into a tight embrace, feeling slightly guilty about the blood, and the gore, and the other bodily fluids that took to her fine robes and rendered them into washing cloths in an instant.
The descent down to ground level was a sad business. Gil had to lean his weight partly on Alistair and trust him to make the right choices in manner of stairs and walls and other such impertinent obstacles. The mabari whined pitifully as he dragged his sheathed sword by its belt along the cobbled floor. "Morrigan's off then, I suppose?" he grumbled into Alistair's chain mail when time came around that he realized no one had insulted their pathetically slow progress.
"Good riddance," Alistair said at once, and Gil guessed she'd made her departure in the confusion. Perhaps for the best, who was he to say?
At the once grand entrance hall, Wynne left them after nearly making them strip their armour and clothes right then and there to make sure their injuries were such that could wait. She hurried off to save more lives before they could suggest that blanket and rocking chair she'd spoken of so long ago. There was that fierce fire in her eyes, so unlike man made, destructive fires, that Gil knew only to name as the Fade spirit, and so he let it pass.
He and Alistair quickly agreed to assist the hysterical soldiers running back and forth to look for survivors, starting by the front gate with a particular four. He sent the miserable hound off to join a group of mabari in the care of a capable-looking soldier.
They found Zevran upon a low stone wall, seeing to a deep gash in his left arm, with stains in his blonde hair that, seemingly, were more painful to him than the actual hole in his body, according to the genuine grimace he pulled at Alistair mentioning it. Gil thought for a second, then emptied what was left in his water skin over Zevran's head.
"I think that's the best we can hope for at the present time," Alistair offered as Zevran spluttered resignedly.
Gil turned away to survey the broken earth, littered with bodies, arrows and the odd body part. The stench was nothing to the sight, but after merely a few minutes on the ground, his nose became stuffed. A blessing, surely.
A hand as big as his head fell upon his shoulder, surprisingly gently for all its power and weight, and Gil sighed. "Looks like you didn't have the easiest of times down here either."
"That is an euphemism," Sten answered.
"Have you seen Leliana and Oghren?"
"Yes."
"How are they then?" Gil elaborated.
"They are both fine."
"I believe they went to pay a visit to the healers," Zevran assisted from were he was sitting behind them. "It seems there are things that actually can crack a dwarf's skull after all."
"Such as?" Alistair inquired, massaging a bump of his own.
"Such as falling under the beam of a collapsing house," Zevran drawled and pointed to a ruin of a house that seemed to have been attacked by a massive ogre with a spear through his skull, somehow. "Funny thing is, he managed this afterthe battle was done."
They managed a small laugh to this. At least, it could be termed a chuckle.
"Well, we should try to organize an…organized search," Alistair then said timidly, and Gil did his best to sober up.
"Yes, quite right," he agreed. "I'll go fill our waterskins, and you make yourself heard and seen." He thought for a second, looking at militia, elves, humans and dwarves alike as some of them alternately tried to see to their own wounds, that of others, and be in every place at once. "Now is an excellent time for the first sight of the new king, and it won't hurt if it looks like he's doing something," he added, looking back at the equally disoriented, former Warden.
Alistair looked a little hesitant at that, scratching the bump on his head that had now begun to bleed.
"On second thought, perhaps it's more important that he looks like he knows what he's doing," Gil pressed on, and looked around. "Sten, will you go with Alistair?"
The Sten and former general nodded, and relief flooded Alistair's face.
"I always know you'll phrase everything just so I won't let anything go to my head." Alistair smiled, with a dry pull to his lips.
"I'll always be around to burst your ego," Gil said and smiled back.
"Size is no obstacle," Zevran croaked.
They dispersed then, Zevran with a bandaged arm and a nearly invisible limp, Alistair with a forced straight back and high-held head, accompanied by the silent Sten, who looked even more menacing than usual with the frightening amount of blood on his armour.
Gil assisted with the carrying of wounded soldiers, the removal of corpses from areas where tents were set up as field hospitals, and the putting out of several fires, in hope of saving some of the remaining buildings. At some point, he must have sat himself down upon a barrel of salted fish, of all things, for after a short moment he became aware of a hand on his shoulder, pulling his back and forth rather than actually shaking him. To his dismay, the light had changed during that little while, which led his to the painful conclusion that some significant amount of time had passed, during which he had been idle. It was decidedly brighter in the west.
"Sir, are you all right?" A small elf peered at him while clutching a bucket of water to his chest. "There are mages in the tents over there: shall I assist you?"
Momentarily stunned by the genteel manner of someone one third his size and less than half his age, Gil politely declined the offer, beet red over the fact that he'd been found nodding off when there were people all around him still working. He stood and shook his limbs out under the scrutinizing eye of the small elf, who didn't think it all right to leave until he was absolutely sure Gil wasn't about to keel over or call it a life.
From there on, it was all muscle memory and no real conscious thought. He removed his armor when the weight threatened to slow him down, and asked the mages in a red and yellow tent - intended for merrier times, no doubt - to watch it for his, hoping he'd remember which tent it was in the chaos that had ensued.
Dawn came and went, and Gil accepted some bread and ale only when it was forced into his hands, and he was pushed down on a bench standing by a long wooden table. He was pretty sure the table had stood previously in the arl of Denerim's estate, but thought little of it.
"Bit of a night, yeah?" A tall soldier with arms like a smith's leaned his enormous maul against the table and sat down beside Gil. The soldiers seated around the table grumbled and swore as they agreed, apparently familiar with the giant of a man.
"That's an euphemism," Gil said, borrowing Sten's phrase.
The man and the rest of the soldiers laughed, not knowing who he was, and he felt himself cracking a small smile as well.
"You look completely done in, lad," the big man said to him.
"I could sleep for days," he confessed with a sigh.
The man turned fully to look at him closer.
"That might be a good idea in your case. Why don't you do that?" he suggested, and the soldiers around them agreed readily.
"I am not going to sleep when there are wounded to be seen to." Gil protested, chewing endlessly on his stale piece of bread. Sitting down, however, made him realize he might not be able to get back up. Drinking the luke-warm ale barely made him grimace, as the men and women tut-tutted at him, sounding to him a lot like a bunch of old fishwives. He told them as much, and the large man guffawed and slapped Gil's back.
"What is your name, small stuff?" he enquired while the men grumbled.
Gil hastily wiped his hands on his soiled breeches and offered his right. "Gil, out of Highever."
"Bran, Marcher." The big man accepted his hand with a smile. His handshake was firm and strong, calloused by many years of hard work. When Gil looked into his face, he noticed a pair of striking green eyes who looked at his in earnest.
Bran introduced his to those he could around the table, and then the other took it upon themselves to introduce each other. Some minutes passed by as they spoke of nothing and everything that didn't matter, and managed one tentative laugh after another, most owed to gallows humour. Truly exhausted, Gil was just about to be saved from making his second nose-dive into his ale by an observant Redcliffe guardswoman when screams tore their attention away.
A warehouse not far from their street had exploded. Gil was later told a supply of soulrot bombs had caught on fire, never mind what they were doing there in the first place. They all dropped their food and drink and ran towards the sound of voices, fatigue ignored in favour of duty, of resposibility or somesuch - of indoctrination, Bran shouted across at Gil as they fetched their fifth bucket of water. It was midday, and the sun stood at its highest, burning, mercilessly, an already soot streaked army, when Gil collapsed in the shade against the side of a building, and perhaps suppertime when someone very tall and strong picked him up and started walking somewhere.
Then he did not wake for two days.