From 12 follows to 25 in one chapter! Wow, guys, way to make me feel great. Thank you for all the follows, the favorites and to RowenPaperWhite for the single review.
Chapter 7:
Those great big wood and metal doors slammed home behind us, reminding everyone that we were now technically on our own. Aedan assured Greagoir that we wouldn't come back until we had the First Enchanter with us. This meant getting to the top of the tower in as few pieces as possible.
Alistair posed a thought before we headed through the door leading to the rest of the tower. He suggested I stay behind, seeing as we had no idea what magic would do to me as an outsider to this world. Aedan nixed the idea.
Insert the comedic gulp sound here.
The bodies of Templars were strewn across the floor, all of which we checked for a pulse. Having found all of them dead and gone, we moved on to the hallway. My second play through was a mage, Amell. I remade her toon a couple of times with different mods before I liked the way she looked. Eventually she fell in love with Alistair, made him king and gave her life for the ultimate sacrifice. The point to that story was that I knew my way around the Circle well enough even though the real floor plan deviated somewhat from the game floor plan.
Aedan's hand hadn't even touched the first door before it burst open with two orangey-yellow rage demons bearing down on us. Morrigan managed to freeze one in place, which Sten and Aedan took care of in record time. The other went straight for Alistair, and since I stood near him, me.
Cutting a rage demon is like cutting semi-solid fire, my blade warmed in my hands as I slashed through the shoulder area. I yanked it free as Alistair bashed it aside with his shield and stabbed it through the middle with his sword. One of Leliana's arrows sunk in right between its eyes. The demon fizzled out like a dying fire, sinking into the stone floor, leaving behind the stink of rotten eggs.
"Well," I said eyeing the space where the demon dissolved, "there is one thing Thedas has common with my world. Demonic presence still smells like sulfur." Have I mentioned that I watch a lot of horror movies? Don't judge me.
"There are demons in your world?" Alistair asked me as we walked on toward the next room, weapons loose but ready.
"Ask me that again when we're not about to fight for our lives, okay Al?"
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Right, El."
By the time we made it to Wynne and her ass-kicking spells of awesome, I felt pretty damn secure in my ability to defend myself. I solo killed a shade. Not pretty, but I did it and hell if that didn't make me feel less terrified of being in the Circle with all of these demons, shades, and horrors running around loose.
Unlike in game, Wynne did not look as composed and put together as she does when the player first meets her. Dying, defending herself, the apprentices and the younglings took an obvious toll. Grey wisps of hair fell around her face and the back of her neck, her brow wrinkled in concentration as she ended the rage demon's existence with extreme prejudice. Not every day you get to see a fifty year old woman brought back to life and possessed by the spirit of faith kick some demonic ass.
"It's you! No…come no further." Wynne began the dialogue, "Grey Warden or no, I will strike you down where you stand."
I could practically see the menu options hovering between her and Aedan as they spoke. There were words practically clawing at the back of my throat to get out and say something, insert a correction here, a little advice there. Closing my eyes I reminded myself of one thing, one very important thing. Keeping my mouth shut meant not royally screwing with the storyline.
While attempting to distract myself the kids caught my attention. They weren't huddled together, but they congregated closely to their slightly older caretakers. Fear, sadness and worry hung like a heavy ominous cloud over their semi-circle. An idea struck me. Kids in this world couldn't be much different from kids in my world.
After a moment of searching I found my Kindle turned it on and moved over toward them. "Hey," I said to a brown haired girl with pigtails, "would you like to see something?"
She looked up at me with big, curious green eyes. "It's not scary is it?"
Kneeling beside her, "Nah, it's really great. I think your friends will like it too." I pulled up my apps as a handful of them gathered around me. My guilty secret, not reality television, not celebrity gossip, no, no, it was something far worse.
I played Bejeweled.
The electronic, upbeat music played softly though it seemed to echo throughout the room. I cringed as did the kids; they backed away from the light and sound. Except for one, one of the boys, he was maybe four or five. He poked the screen. When it didn't do anything to him, he took hold of one side and tilted it. The screen flipped. He giggled and flipped the screen again. Seeing that nothing bad happened the others came closer, watching with bated breath as I showed them how to destroy groups of jewels on the screen. One at a time I let them trace around watching each line or connection explode, much to their amusement.
"What kind of magic is it?" One of the slightly older girls asked me, her fingers twisting nervously.
Shaking my head, "It's not magic."
"It looks like magic," one of the older mages said warily.
I stood up, facing her. Of course it would be the one that always seemed in a panic about her abilities, the hysterical mage. I'm not a fan of making mages tranquil, but there was a candidate perfect for the procedure.
"To a primitive mind any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic." Thank you Lex Luthor for misquoting Clarke in the best – and sexiest in my opinion – possible way.
She must have realized I insulted her because her skin colored ruddy in a blush.
"Technology," Aedan stood beside me, watching the kids play with the new toy, "I'm afraid to ask."
"As with anything from my world, Warden," in front of others I used his title, "there are things I can explain and things I can't. When we're out of the tower and not saving people from the monsters within," get it, monsters within. Bad pun. I apologize for my existence. "I'll attempt to explain this one."
We left the kids with my Kindle. They needed it more than I did.
With Wynne in tow, the group of us headed onward and upward to the Senior Mage Quarters. One thing I never realized when playing the game, there were no windows. I wanted to look out onto Lake Calenhad. I know there are windows I've seen them in game. In the harrowing chamber that is.
A shudder went down my spine. The dwarves, the way they lived I understood that. They never saw the sun unless they went topside. The majority didn't go topside because they never needed to. For them there was no sunlight to miss, so they didn't.
Now I understood why Anders hated it here. As relaxed as this Circle's rules and regulations were in comparison to the Circle in Kirkwall, the lack of a view outside the Circle punctuated the sentiment. Anders and his ability to get out of here made so much more sense now. And, I thought as I looked up at the uniform grey walls, was kind of impressive.
Anders.
I stopped mid-step and flipped around toward Wynne.
"Where is Anders?"
My question seemed to startle her a bit. I could practically see her mental calculation of how I could possibly know the wayward escape artist. Her tone cautiously guarded when she answered me, "He was caught in the middle of a break out attempt. The templars have placed him in the holding cells before trouble broke out."
A bout of worry built up in my chest. On one hand, he could be perfectly safe entertaining himself with the odd magic trick or two. On the other hand though the man had a penchant for attracting danger and making stupid decisions, like letting himself bond with Justice. Then again, if the cells were where I thought they were he was probably in the clear. One of the blood mages would have had to get past Wynne and the apprentices to get down there in the first place.
"Who is Anders?" Aedan asked me as Wynne spoke with the Tranquil Owain.
"A future Grey Warden," I told him trying to keep my voice lower than a whisper so that no one else heard, "but you'll meet him soon enough."
His brow furrowed, "If he's going to be a warden, then that means…" his voice trailed off as he contemplated. The wheels moved on their own behind his blue eyes, the tumblers clicking into place. The corners of his mouth pulled up, his expression brightening. "We're going to win," he said slowly, like he didn't believe it completely, like he was rolling the words around in his head because they just didn't want to string together properly. "We'll win," he said in a sort of wonderment I usually reserved for kids under five, "won't we?"
I mimed locking my lips and throwing away the key.
Before we ever reached the room where the tranquil mages were being corrupted, I could feel the force of the blood magic. My stomach roiled as if I swallowed rancid beef and the rotten stench of sulfur thickened the air, souring it. I gagged, coughing into my arm. Breathing through my mouth did little to help since every breath felt like it coated my tongue with the disgusting flavor. After a handful of minutes I realized it was just me. The lot of them, even the dog walked on as if it didn't bother them. The smell grew stronger and stronger when we reached the door. I was practically choking on the air. It was like cow manure smeared into rotten eggs baking on a NYC street mid-August. When we reached the door a squeezing pressure started in on my lungs, my head and my ears popped like mad.
Aedan threw open the door and everyone attacked. There were arrows flying, spells zinging, and those superfluous little comments coming from everyone's mouths. I could barely stand up straight. Breathing made me light headed and woozy, a lot like I'd been right before… Oh shit. No, not now. Not now. If I passed out now I could end up in the fade, or worse. No, no, no. This couldn't happen now of all times, of all places.
Dragging myself into the room, I waded into the fray and ushered the tranquil mages away from danger. It took everything I had to keep upright. Not a second after the last demon went down, I did too. I lay on the stone floor barely able to suck in breath. The air had cleared a little. I could feel the pressure of it ease off my brain case.
I blinked and I swore for a moment that Brandon Lee stood over me saying something. I could almost hear him, his words were fuzzy like a static radio. I blinked again, woozy as the world spun around me. An urgent feeling struck me so hard I felt it physically.
When I opened my eyes after what felt like hours of them being close it was Wynne kneeling over me her staff glowing as she worked on healing me. I sat up coughing so hard my throat burned. The hands holding released me so I could flip over and lose the entire contents of my stomach on the floor. My head pounded like I'd gone a couple of rounds with Tyson and every single muscle group in my body felt like it had been clenched for hours. When I finally managed to pull myself together, which was a few minutes in all honesty I didn't like the looks I was receiving.
"How long was I out?" I asked no one in particular.
"You were dying." Aedan told me, he came closer and touched my shoulder gently, "Elyria you weren't breathing, and your heart stopped beating."
Definitely could be considered worse than a grand mal seizure and hallucinations of a world that was technically not real outside someone's gaming console, good to know. Breathing in and out a few times helped me clear out my lungs, but heaven help me my kingdom for a tooth brush and mouth wash. "I'm okay," I assured him and everyone else, "how long was I gone though?"
"Your heart stopped for no more than a few seconds," Wynne assured me in a motherly yet professional tone. "I was able to revive you with a spell."
Not that much worse, not from perspective at least. Where I'm from, if someone hadn't preformed CPR on me, I really would have been dead and gone. Chilling with Cody for the rest of eternity didn't bother me so much. The actually dying part did.
"I think," I said slowly, rolling the idea around in my head, "I was about to fall back into my world and stalled it by refusing to go. That must have made my heart stop."
Aedan grabbed me and pulled me forward into his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, pressing his lips to my hair. "You scared me."
Warm fuzzy feelings took over. "Sorry, I didn't mean to. I didn't know fighting it could hurt me."
"Next time," Alistair said his voice rough in a telling sort of way, "Just go. Losing a friend to her own stubborn will to fight is just..."
"Stupid," Leliana finished for him with a sniff, "incredibly stupid."
Aww, I felt all squishy and warm inside. They cared.
Sten, ever stoic, "You live. We should continue."
Correction, most of them cared.
Morrigan remained silent.
Wynne insisted I use a health potion and an injury kit, both of which were – surprise – enchanted to work on application. The minor health potion, a bottle of reddish liquid approximately the size of my palm went down like strawberry-rhubarb flavored slugs. I made a bleh sound after drinking it. The injury kit was actually just a really long band of gauze tinted a light brown with medicine and magic. Wynne ripped it into smaller strips and applied one to my forehead, one to the back of my neck, one along my spine, across my hips, behind my knees and around my ankles. The last strip she put over a large gash I managed to acquire in the fray.
Just when I feared walking around like I should have been a bubble girl I felt like someone rinsed me off with a washcloth. A gigantic, fluffy, high thread count washcloth soaked with the most fabulous soap and highest quality water imaginable. I felt good. I felt better than I had in days. The injury kit pieces fell off of me, flopping uselessly to the ground where they dissolved all on their own.
Once everyone was certain I would remain alive and intact we ventured on. This time I walked at the back of the group, behind Wynne. I lost count of the doors we opened, the rooms we cleared out. I lost count of the monsters we killed, and thankfully I hadn't been forced to run any of the people through. I had yet to take a human life, and I wanted to keep it that way. Realistically though, I knew eventually I might have to. I just truly did not want to. The never ending number of monsters in our wake seemed daunting. Aedan opened another door and…
"Hey," Emma nudged me with her elbow, "what's up with the frown? You okay?"
Attempting to concentrate on my homework just wasn't working. We always sojourned to the library for about an hour before dinner to get some homework done. Emma convinced me years ago to just suck it up and do the work early. Only the words seemed to jumble together, flipping themselves around and upside down. Rubbing my eyelids only seemed to make it worse. Strange symbols floated up from the page smacking me in the nose.
I sighed and closed the book, "Just over tired I guess. Not much sleep lately."
"Well if you would stop practicing for fencing at five at the morning, you'd be more awake all day."
Right, I had been doing that a lot lately. Waking up early to work with…wait who had been my practice partner? There was a blank spot where the name and face of my fencing partner should have been. Wracking my brain I tried to remember. Who had been getting up early with me to practice with me? Who? For the life of me I could not remember his name. Not even remotely. I knew it was a guy, someone I was friends with but the guys I knew were not in my fencing class. I could remember things about him. He was awkward and funny and he had a puppy dog demeanor when he wasn't kicking my ass every morning. I called him Obi-Wan sometimes, didn't I?
As I thought about my friends I realized none of them, not one of them fit the description. Who had I been practicing with? Who was my fencing partner? Why couldn't I recall his name? Or his face?
"Ems," did my voice sound slow and sluggish, or was I imagining it? "Who have I been working with?"
She rolled her shoulders nonchalantly, flipping a page in her nursing text book. A full scale decapitation filled the page, with maggots, flies, beetles and roaches crawling all over the poor individual. My gag reflex triggered.
"You should get some sleep," Emma told me in that same distant tone as she turned to another page, this one blessedly graphics free. "You'll crash and burn and then how will you pass your finals?"
Ha, finals as if they mattered to me in Thedas. Wait. Thedas. I was still in Thedas, not New York. Pushing up the sleeves to my hoodie I found I still bore the marks of the days that passed in Ferelden. Getting my butt handed to me every morning by Alistair. Kissing Aedan in the moonlight. Leliana humming softly as we walked. Morrigan's perpetual pout. Sten's badass stand-there-and-be-intimidating act. Wynne's soft hands gently pressing injury kit pieces to my skin.
The chair flipped as I jumped away from Emma and the other non-people in the room. They didn't change though, not one of them. A lot of them stopped moving, stopped talking, the library filled with a ringing silence. They looked up at me with alien eyes. No shock, no curiosity, flat emotionless eyes like a great white sharks circling around their prey.
Fear sang through my veins. Where were my weapons? My sword, the back up dagger, where were they? As I turned looking for them the small number of demons, fade spirits, whatever you wanted to call them moved in unison all taking a handful of steps toward me. I froze stranded in the middle of the wide round table. They stopped a handful of feet from me, save Emma who stood just as she had before. Lovely a deadly game of Simon Says, only I'm not Simon and I can't hear the cues.
Aedan chose that moment to come to the rescue. He ran through the doors of the library stopping only to take the scenery around him. Relief flooded through me when our eyes met. The demons were motionless as long as I didn't move. I didn't know if they were voice activated like possessed Furbies, or movement activated like those Halloween mats that scared the crap out of me as a kid.
Ah, screw it. "Aedan, honey, not that I'm not in need of a rescue, but don't move."
Emma's laugh sounded flat and ominous as it came out of her mouth, "Ellie, don't you want to stay here? Be at home with all the comforts you're used to? I bought ice cream, your favorite. Birthday Cake. We can watch a Sherlock marathon later. That sounds fun doesn't it?"
I rolled my eyes at her, "If you were even a decent imitation of Emma you would know, she isn't into Benedict Cumberbatch." A running jump landed me about five feet from Aedan.
He tossed me a sword and asked, "Who is Benedict Cumber-batch?"
"Can we talk about his royal hotness when we're not fighting for our lives," I replied right before Emma, her face twisted with rage, attacked us with hagraven fingers. The nails sliced at my skin drawing thin but deep blood trails across the back of my hand. One swing to block her hand and another swing down sliced off most of her hand. She screamed at me an alien sound coming throat. One of her hands rose up to come at me again. I cut it off before she could slice. Swinging up I lodged the blade between her ribs and yanked with everything I had.
After Emma's doppelganger fell everyone in the library attacked, all at the same time. Aedan and I were back to back fighting off people I vaguely remembered from my home world. A girl I used to pass everyday on my way in and out of the dorm threw herself at me wielding a computer keyboard as a weapon. One of the librarians chucked texts books at us from a safe distance.
"This is ridiculous," Aedan yelled as he cut his way through a boy from my Wednesday morning Mythology class who somehow managed to break a chair into pieces and was stabbing the nailed end at Aedan. The boy's body flopped to the floor, dissolving the way the demons did.
Sliding my blade home into a redhead, "It could have been worse. This could be the gym." Imagining barbells and exercise equipment being thrown at us made me happy the Sloth demon hadn't known enough to put us there.
Eventually we killed them all. Thankfully their bodies were gone or I might have had to deal with the psychological repercussions of having to murder people I sort of knew. "That," I said as I leaned against one of the library stacks, "sucked a lot."
Aedan watched me with something like pride in his eyes, "I knew you would be too smart to fall for it."
Winking at him I said, "That's because you're head over heels for me."
The world started to fog over, specifically him. I started forward only to find my feet stuck in place. When the world cleared there we all were, standing in front of the Sloth demon, still stuck in the fade. Only now we were at the boss fight. Oh. Joy.
The demon went through the usual lines of putting us back, making us happier this time to keep us docile. The usual bad guy shtick only with slightly more ominously evil overtones and the general sense of impending doom to go with it.
Wynne gave her speech about us always finding one another.
Bad guy went back to the monologue. Why do they always monologue? Seriously, almost every bad guy in almost every movie, book, comic, video game and what not, they monologue their entire plan right before having their asses handed to them on a silver platter. It's as if they know they have to seal their fate so they annoy the hero/protagonist(s) into ending their miserable existence in order to stop the mind numbing tedium.
"Oi," I snapped, interrupting his one sided gabfest, "Emperor Palpatine, much as I'm sure we would all love to hear your 'come to the dark side' speech, can we get on with it? We've got innocent people to save and more demons to vanquish. And I think I speak for all of us when I say we really, really just want to beat the fricken tar out of you."
Wynne, Leliana and Morrigan shot me identical, 'why you so crazy' looks.
Sten stood like the rock he was, his borrowed sword in hand.
Alistair, instead of outing his normal line, busted out laughing. "What she said."
Aedan rolled one shoulder, winked at me, and attacked.
The lot of us woke up on the cold hard ground, groaning as if we were up partying like it was nineteen ninety nine all night. All of the feeling good I had when Wynne patched me up earlier fled leaving me like a chewed up wad of bubble gum stuck under a display table at Macys. A leather gloved hand appeared in front of me.
Aedan pulled me up, blue eyes alight with amusement, "When we are safely out of here, you have a lot of explaining to do."
An idea struck me, I snorted, "Say that last part with an Antivan accent and add the name Lucy right before it."
His brow creased as he took the Litany of Andrala from Wynne. "What? Why?"
"Please, I need a laugh."
Aedan sighed, "Maybe later, as you said, we have people to save and demons to vanquish."
I stuck my tongue out at him, "Spoil sport."
Onward we went.
The dragonlings made their nest in a pile of half-rotten bodies and rags. Flies soared around them as they tore at bloated, rotting human flesh. The dragonlings snapped at us with razor sharp teeth, squawking like rabid seagulls and growling like oversized bobcats. Talons the size of small daggers sliced through the air as they swiped at us. I was more than happy to skewer one of the foul dragon offspring until it stopped twitching. So did not want to fight a real dragon.
Finally we reached poor Cullen stuck in his cage of light. Of course he shouted about not falling for this trick again and dropped to his knees to pray. Wynne and Aedan again began the dialogue. Leliana let us know she could tell that he'd been tortured which of course earned her the equivalent of a slap to the hand.
I, on the other hand, dropped to a crouch in front of him. He looked so pitiful. Mournfully pathetic. He prayed to his maker to come down from the heavens and save him from the horrors inflicted upon him.
"We're not demons." I told him, "Now stand up and act like you have a back bone or so help me I will find a way in there and once I do, you can bet I will kick the snot out of you."
Cullen looked at me, honestly looked at me with his honey-brown eyes and let go of a breath I bet he'd been holding a while. He blinked a dawning realization hitting him. "You…" his voice shook, cautious and tired and scared, "did Greagoir send you?"
As if on cue, which I suppose he was, Aedan stepped in and took over. Cullen went through the evil possessed mages and whatnot.
I tuned it out.
Unlike before I couldn't feel the pressure of the blood magic upstairs until I set foot on the stairs. The demonic stink of sulfur wasn't any weaker, nor was it stronger. Holding one hand about a foot from the door I could feel the pressure practically threatening me through the heavy wood separating us. Pressing my hand closer I could feel the force vibrate up my arm, gripping at me and squeezing. Not as tightly as before but then I lacked proximity right now. I could only imagine how bad it would get when we actually entered the harrowing chamber.
"Traveler," Morrigan's voice drew my attention.
So not in the mood for her attitude, "What?"
The bitch zapped me.
Not pleasant.
I dropped like a bag of bricks. When I came round again I found Aedan had one hand on Morrigan's wrist, restraining her from casting with her staff. With a scowl he let go of her ordering Alistair and Sten to train their weapons on her. They both did so with great pleasure.
Aedan knelt down in front of me, "Are you alright?"
Wordlessly I nodded. I let him help me into standing. "I feel crap-tastic, but besides that, I'm pretty sure I'll live."
Unexpectedly he drew me against his chest, pressing his lips against my hair. "I thought you were gone," he murmured. "I saw Morrigan hit you and…"
Pushing up on my toes I pressed a kiss to his lips, "Worry about her later. We've got mages to save and a First Enchanter to rescue."
The corners of his mouth inched upward, "We?"
"Yes we."
No costume change needed, thank you great universe and whatever powers that be for keeping me from embarrassing myself. Beyond the door there was only a narrow case of stairs. No opening to the Harrowing Chamber. We, with Morrigan safely packed into the center of the group, followed the staircase up and up for a handful of minutes. Finally we came to another heavy wooden door.
It stood open, allowing us to hear the cries and ragged breathing of those in the Harrowing room. Uldred's voice rose over it all, a double echo of a voice I remembered just barely. When playing in game his voice sounds human, normal, but right then it sounded much like those horror movie voices. The ones featured in things like The Rite and The Evil Dead, hell even the Exorcist. Only this was real and so much more chilling.
A bone deep shudder went down my spine. Demons were fine and dandy plot devices but holy Mary, not in real life where possession turned you into a monster. Taking a quiet, deep breath in I reminded myself you had to agree to let the monster into yourself. While the notion helped a little, watching Aedan creep stealthily up the stone stairs to the Harrowing chamber reminded me of the misquoted line from an old poem.
"'Come in, come in,' said the Spider to the fly."
Leliana went second, her feet silent on the stone. Alistair after moving ever so slowly to diminish the sound of his plate armored feet. Morrigan followed them up, quiet as a church mouse on Sunday. I was next praying to any higher power listening to let me be just as quiet as they were. Except it didn't matter, because by the time I reached the third stone step, Aedan had already engaged Uldred in dialogue.
By the time Sten and Wynne arrived at the top step with us, I was gagging on the stink of rotten eggs and sour blood magic. Aedan went back and forth with the demon inside Uldred.
Wynne said her usual line, "You're mad! There's nothing glorious about what you've become Uldred."
The demon inside the mage meat sack gave a double toned laugh, it echoed from inside the body. "Uldred? He is gone. I am Uldred and yet not Uldred. I am more than he was."
Yes, about three feet more and 150 to 200 pounds more. Big, reddish brown with more eyes. Yep, absolutely more. I'm sure Uldred didn't smell as rank as this guy did either.
Around the room the other demons swayed slowly watching us with alien eyes. The mages on the ground cast us wary, weary glances. Did we mean salvation or did we mean to put them through more horror?
The first enchanter spoke, beseeching Wynne, Aedan and the rest of us to stop the force inside Uldred before it could raise a demonic army.
Wynne reminded Aedan of the litany. Quickly he took it from her and turned toward me. "Go," he told me handing me the litany, "keep chanting it until this is done."
Oh. Shit. I grabbed the fragile looking scroll just as Uldred transformed. Oh my god. I knew he would be horrible to look upon, frightening. The stuff of nightmares but this, this I wasn't expecting. The creature inside Uldred stood nearly twelve feet tall, its body red-brown shiny with blood, dripping with gore and other bodily fluids. It roared at the room, the stone walls, and the floors all trembling in its wake. The stink of sulfur intensified to the point where everyone began to cough from it. My eyes watered, it became even harder to breathe.
I broke away from the fray, slashing at any demon coming near. There weren't many, no more than the five that were in the room to begin with but they seemed to move quickly, making it feel like there were more of them. A bumpy, misshapen, grotesque hand reached for me. Stabbing it with my dagger I went around and past it toward the mages on the ground.
A pulsing glow came from Uldred.
The litany.
I wouldn't have called the words on the page English necessarily, but they were readable and I read them. My tongue tripped over words I barely understood. It felt like reading a paper written by an astrophysicist that had gone on a speed/coke bender for twenty four hours previous to writing the paper. The words were small, cramped and written in haste. When I reached the bottom of the page I returned to the top and kept reading.
It felt like the battle, the clanging sound of weapons, my friend shouting, the roar and gurgle of demons, the sounds the mages on the floor made lasted forever and a day. Really it couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes. Alistair received the final kill, slamming his blade deeply into the creature that used to be Uldred and yanking it out again only to repeat the action. The monster lay on the ground staring lifelessly up at the vaulted circular ceiling of the chamber.
The first enchanter pushed himself up from the ground uttering, "Maker, I'm too old for this."
Wynne was at his side a moment later helping him stay steady, "Irving, are you alright?"
"I've," he leaned heavily on her, "been better but I am thankful to be alive. I suppose that is your doing, isn't it Wynne?"
Dialogued options, I'm not joking, I'm fairly certain I could see the transparent window pop up with a half dozen things for Aedan to say. Which he did in spectacular fashion.
The rest of us helped the handful of mages that survived Uldred's insanity/possession up in order to get them down stairs. Irving said the templars were waiting. Greagoir needed to be informed.
The mage that leaned on me was named Timothy. He couldn't have been more than twenty and every other breath he told me I was the most beautiful creature in the entire world. He proposed marriage twice.
Affording him a patient smile, "Thank you Tim, but I'm afraid I'm already in a relationship."
Timothy blinked at me blearily through the pain in his eyes, "Oh. The templar?"
What? I looked over at Alistair who was helping another mage, a blonde fellow with deep green robes and a bloody head wound. "Ah, no." I nodded toward Aedan with his arm wrapped around Irving for support, "Him."
Tim looked down at me, he had at least four or five inches on me, "You're joking."
"Nope."
It took more than twenty minutes for us – including the mages – to get back to the bottom floor of the tower. I was in agreement with Irving; whoever said the mages should be housed in a tower must have been drinking a lot of sake that night. I made that mistake once and found myself standing in the bathrooms at MOMA with only a poncho and men's boxers on. Hell, I thought to myself, at least they hadn't designed Hogwarts. I could only imagine how crappy that might have been.
I handed off Tim to one of the other mages after we reached the room where Wynne had holed up with the kids. The children were doing their best at draining my Kindle of its battery life.
One of them realized I returned. He held it out to me with the biggest grin, "Thank you miss."
I had about twenty minutes, maybe a half hour left in it before it died. I put it back into my bag. Looking toward the back of the room reminded me of Anders possibly sitting in the cells downstairs, bored out of his mind doing half assed party tricks. Only…I jogged the fifteen feet between where I stood and the door. The door had looked wrong from back there, up close I knew why. It was slightly askew. No one would have noticed in a passing glance but on closer inspection one found the locked door was open. Pulling my sword from its sheath, I used my foot to prop it open for me to see in. A heavy feeling in the air told me I wasn't alone.
Anders.
"What is wrong?" Leliana asked from somewhere behind and to the left of me.
I shook my head, calling back, "Aedan. I'm borrowing Leliana for a bit."
"You are?" The red haired rogue asked playfully, "I do not know if the warden will approve."
Rolling my eyes, "You know, for all your innocence you really are just a dirty pervert at the core."
"I would not say perverted," Leliana teased, "more that I am opportunistic perhaps."
We trotted down the hallway, my memory guiding us. Where my memory failed to fill in the gaps she and I found disturbed spider webs and corpses of spiders. Someone had absolutely been down here. A sinking feeling began in my guts, rising up into my stomach and throat, bringing me bitter bile which I spat into a corner. Please, please let Anders be okay.
He may be stupid and crazy and pig headed. He might be a murder eventually but right now he was still just a mage in need of help. When I began to think I'd gotten us lost, Leliana placed her hand on my shoulder to stop me. She stood stock still, finger pressed to her lips. We listened. At first I didn't hear it, but only because the sound was muffled by the many hallways in the labyrinthine underground structure. The sound of someone using magic followed by the faintest call for help, and cursing the likes of which might even make Isabella flush bright red.
The rogue and I broke into a run rounding corners, heading toward the fight. A large, heavy wooden, locked door stood in our way. Leliana, ever useful and brilliant, dropped to one knee lock picks in hand. Her fingers moved nimbly, quickly ticking over the tumblers until the door clicked open. She practically pulled it off its hinges to get inside.
Anders stood at the far wall of his cage, blasting the demon in front of him with whatever magic he could call up. He looked worn, tired and frustrated. He bled from a shoulder wound that trickled blood down the side of his robes, staining them deep crimson.
Leliana fired one; two, three shots at the demon to draw its attention away from the mage. It roared, angry from being disturbed. The damn thing charged us. Leliana backed off firing at it and somehow missing this time. To hell with that. I got in its way and used both hands, both blades, driving them into the thing's chest. At least, I meant to drive it into its chest. The short sword somehow found its way into the demon's neck, the dagger slid sickeningly into its ribs.
The sloth-like demon pawed me, blackish-red blood that stank like rotten eggs spurting from its wounds. An arrow lodged into the thing's right eye. It dropped like a brick taking my blades with it. I had to yank them free.
In his cage Anders had fallen back against the wall, breathing heavily, eyes rolled up into his head. "Idiot," I muttered, "you used up all your magic." The cell door didn't give when I pulled on it. Leliana obligingly opened it for me.
Crouching in front of Anders I shook him gently, "Anders."
He barely responded.
Perturbed I pinched his cheek, "You hard headed idiot, wake up."
That did it. He came back to himself, shouting, jumping and then realizing he was safe. Anders breathed out the stinky halitosis breath of someone who never bushed their teeth. He took in first my appearance then Leliana's. Then he looked at me again, uncertainty mixing in with hope.
"Who-" he paused, probably rethinking whatever he was going to ask. His mouth opened again uttering a soft, "Thank you."
I ruffled his messy blonde head of hair, relieved that he was okay. "You're welcome."
If you've read any other stories you might know how ill my grandmother is. Stage 4 lung cancer. She was diagnosed February before last, and now it seems to be in the final stages. Since I literally have no mother, she's all I've ever had in that department. If I could ask of you all some more wishes for luck, please keep us in mind.
Thank you for reading and I hope you liked it.
