Chapter Eight: Rescue
He's halfway up the stairs when he hears a commotion from above him. There's a large group of people coming down the stairs. His balance is disturbed when he misses the next step and he stumbles into the hard stone wall. Cullen rests there just a moment, listening.
He hears no armor, not likely to be guards then. The voices sound angry, but victorious and they're murmuring about mages; one of them says 'Hawke' and then 'Amell'. Cullen's blood runs cold. He has no idea who these people are, in this secret part of the Keep but the idea of strangers grumbling about Solona and her cousins infuriates him. He pushes himself back upright and continues his trek, faster this time.
The way the outside staircase of the Keep is designed creates long curves in the ever upward bound staircase. It follows the outside of the building and for every strange tower room built it offers another blind stop in the path.
He uses this to his advantage and the group ahead of him doesn't realize he's there until his sword is pushed into the throat of the first man leading. Scratch that, first woman. Her eyes go wide and he stares her down. This sword is sharp and he's careful not to break the skin.
The woman cries out and the mob stops behind her while Cullen looks over the rabble. The people in front of him are dirty and angry and thoroughly Kirkwallian. They're from Lowtown, the most of them. He's pretty sure the man that sold him the necklace he doesn't have the guts to give to Solona is in the middle of the group. Voices start to rise again.
"Knight Commander. Please move out of our way." This must be the man in charge. Is he the butcher? Or perhaps the owner of the Hanged Man. Cullen gives him a steady look and lowers his sword.
"The city is under attack. The Tevinter Imperium landed not twenty minutes ago and is slaughtering anyone they find on the streets." A pause, for effect. He leans in. "What are you doing out here?"
At this twenty voices swell in confusion, panic, fear. The leader of the pack is trying to quiet them but it does little good. From what Cullen can hear these people had no idea about the Imperium. There's a slight scuffle in the middle of the group. The pack tightens. "We should get to our families then, serrah." The leader motions everyone forward and they give Cullen a wide berth as they edge around him.
The staircase is wide enough for ten men. There's plenty of space for the people to pass him in only a moment. The center of the group stays thick with bodies though and he's about to dismiss the randomness of this entire encounter when he catches a flash of templar blue undershirt somewhere in that group as it thins out for just a moment.
The color is distinctive. Only people allowed into the Gallows would have a shirt of that color. Only his templars. Or possibly a mage.
"Halt!" His sword is raised again. The group pauses and shift, more murmurs. He's surrounded and he's not stupid enough to think he could take all of these people but he'll be damned to the Fade if he wouldn't try. The leader pushes back to him.
"Yes Knight Commander?" There's a barely controlled note of pure panic in the man's tone.
Cullen doesn't answer. He advances on the middle of the group, searching again for the so familiar blue. Four or five don't want to move though; they block his view, even as he raises the sword to throat level once more.
"Move aside, citizens."
The brave few shake their heads and behind him, the leader grabs for his upper arm. It's not a strong grip and it's not threatening but it's restrictive. "Knight Commander-"
Cullen keeps his eyes firmly planted on the men still keeping him from seeing what he knows is there: one of his own men. "I'm going to give you three options. One, you move or two, I make you move."
A young man, strappy and looking defiant, raises his chin. "What's our third option, Knight Commander?" His question is snarled and challenging.
It's a small thing, really. The way Cullen lowers his own chin and smiles. It is a gruesome smile and holds no warmth. A tiny lifting of the corner of his lips and the effect is immediate. The four men in front of him back up and clearly there's a body behind them, the way they form an uneasy half circle. His words, when he finally speaks, are sharp as the blade he carries in his hand. "Your third option is the surrender of your lives. I will tear the lot of you apart. Now move."
He lets the words hang in the air for only a second before he advances again.
"Oh, let him have her. We need to get out of here!" The leader again, calling his men off. It's almost a stampede then as the entire group rushes down the stairs and Cullen is a little surprised at their haste.
He reminds himself that he's just delivered the terrible news that the city is being invaded. They probably wish to get home to their families. He watches the last of them disappear around a curve before looking at their, what? Captive? Surely as the body is bound by the hands and blinded with a sack. The mob had said to let him have her. A woman, then.
When his hands reach for the woman's upper arms, pulling her into a standing position, he hears her whimper and a terrifying thought crosses his mind. That sounded like-
He rips the sack off her head and is met with the wide and terrified eyes of Solona, tear tracks collecting dust on her cheeks and her mouth gagged with a rough strip of cloth. "Oh Maker! I had no idea they had you." His fingers shake when he reaches back and unties the gag.
Her mouth free, Solona sobs softly. He's unsure of what to do. When he loosens the bindings around her hands she leans into his, soaking up his presence. Her fingers curl into the edge of his breastplate by his neck. She's attempting to hold back the crying that is wracking her whole body when he asks quietly, "Lona?"
Her name breaks something inside of her and instead of answering his soft quarry, she picks her face up and buries it in the exposed skin at his neck. Her soft breaths are burning as they cross his fevered skin. He is finally spurred into motion as dampness drips down his throat from her tears. He wraps her up tight in his arms.
He feels like he did the day the Chantry exploded. Everything has fallen to insanity. Magisters and kidnappings and Solona Amell crying in, he hopes, relief. "Lona? What happened?"
Her soft dark hair brushes his chin when she shakes her head, not ready to talk yet so Cullen settles for making small circles on her back with his gauntlet. It can't be particularly comfortable but it's the best he's got. It seems to calm her some and her crying eventually peters out to quiet sniffles.
"The people are uprising." Her words are soft, spoken against his neck. He shivers at the contact of the skin of her lips on his neck. Her statement is punctuated with a light kiss and he shivers all the harder, almost shaking now. "They were in the throne room and they took me. I didn't know what they wanted but as they were dragging me away they said something about holding me ransom. It was clear from their words they thought I was Bethany though. They said something about the sister coming for me."
She finally lifts her head and looks up at him. He's struck by the intensity of her gaze, those soft gray eyes wide and rimmed in red. She looks strained but relieved. "What in the name of the Maker is going on, Cullen?"
He looks up and down the stairs, thinking hard for a moment. The safest place for Solona would be the Gallows. He needs to get her out of Kirkwall and to a secure location. He dips his back and swings her up in to his arms. She gives a squeak of surprise but is soon wrapping her arms fully around his neck, balancing herself, as he starts back down the stairs as fast as he can.
~!~
There is no mercy in the movements of the Champion of Kirkwall. Her strikes are swift and deadly and she is clearing a path down from her throne and into the mob of her people when the door bangs open loudly. One voice, panicked and clear, booms across the room.
"THE IMPERIUM IS ATTACKING!"
She is so very close to slicing open the neck of the mage who has a booth in Hightown when these words bring her to a standstill. They bring everyone to a standstill and all turn and look at the door. Varric is out of breath and seems to be roughed up badly. He holds his side and from her vantage point, Marian can see blood dripping between his fingers.
The people do not stop her as she moves to her friend. He smiles at the sight of her but it is more of a grimace than a greeting. Behind him, Merrill hovers with Fenris glowing at her back. Marian mulls. For just a moment. To collect her thoughts. "How bad is it Varric?"
He shrugs. "A dozen ships, a couple hundred mages. I think I saw some slaves fighting as well." Fenris bristles at that, his skin glowing even brighter.
She turns on her heel and addresses the people of Kirkwall. Bodies are everywhere. She is covered in their blood and surely she's shared quite a bit with those still standing.
"I care not for your quarrels with me. I never have and I regret every death in this room. I fight and bleed for Kirkwall and if Kirkwall does not want me anymore than I will leave. However, right now-." She takes a deep breath and notes that many of the citizens are shifting uncomfortably back and forth.
"Right now this is still my home and there appears to be an army that wishes to challenge us. Right now the Imperium is burning our city and killing our friends, our families." The crowd is still shifting, but agitated now. They mumble and grumble and their voices are rising.
"Right now, a group of foolish mages with no respect for the honorable people of this city has ignored the warnings we've sent out for so many years. We have defeated the Qunari. We have taken the city back from corrupt leaders and I say it's time to give the Imperium a proper Kirkwall greeting."
The room erupts in cheers and shouting. Weapons are waved. The people of Kirkwall that so recently wanted to kill her and her family assemble. Beside her she hears Varric chuckle and say, "You always were good with words."
She gives him a cheeky grin. She must keep her head up and on straight. "Let's go stop an invasion. Again."
She is flanked by Varric and her sister, the two elves trailing behind them and then the mob following. They leave the Keep and shout cries of rage when they begin to sweep through the streets of Kirkwall.
~!~
There is insanity in the streets and as soon as she makes it out of the doorway of the Hawke mansion she's pushed right back by a group of fleeing nobles. Elissa waits in the doorway a moment before she finds the mage pursuing them. She has no bow but the dagger she thros buries itself in the mage's forehead before the woman can finish the spell she's weaving. Her body falls to the stones, her blood splattering a fine arc as she falls.
Elissa pulls her dagger free as more bodies push past her. She hears the screams of children on the far side of the courtyard. A small group of workers from the Blooming Rose is trying to herd crying and panicking kids towards the remnants of the Chantry but they're being picked off, one at a time, by a pair of laughing male mages.
She can feel her blood begin to boil as a young girl with long blond hair is attacked by a swarm of magical insects that tear at her skin. Her roar of rage is lost among the crying and the mages are unaware of her at their backs until she's removed the head of the first and is emptying the other's stomach onto the street.
The group she's just rescued scatters at her attack, headed farther into Hightown and away from the Keep. "Wait, come back!" If she can get them to the Keep, with the Hawkes, she should be able to find a safe spot for them. The workers ignore her pleas; they try to gather the children again and keep herding them towards the burnt remains of the Chantry.
She hears another mage beginning a spell but she is too late to yell out a warning to the completely unorganized group. She watches, horrified, as their small bodies are pulled first towards a tight group and then lifted high into the air.
The bodies come down with a sickening crunch. Small limbs lie twisted and broken. She has to look away for a moment; the sound and the sight echo in her head and her heart. She mustn't cry. She has to-
Her hesitation costs her. The mage has heard her yells and sends a blast of icy magic straight towards her chest. She dodges the worst of it but takes a shard across her still healing upper arms. She cries out in pain even as she rolls away from more danger. She comes up running, changing the course of her path sharply to avoid more incoming attacks. There's a set of boxes up ahead and she dives straight over them, colliding hard against the wall behind them. But she is in full cover and she breathes deep to calm her racing heart.
"Leave her! The mob moves toward Lowtown!" Another voice, much further away, calls out to the mage still sending blasts of ice her way. The square goes silent except for three sets of running feet. She waits a long thirty count before peeking over her cover. The area is empty of living souls except for her. Elissa stands and picks her way over to the group of children and chantry workers. There are no survivors and she is chilled as surveys the twisted bodies in front of her.
It looks far too similar to Darkspawn attacks early in the Blight when she and Alistair had been too late to save a village. She tightens the grip on her daggers. When she turns and heads back towards the Keep, her face is steely and her hardened silhouette is framed by the husk of the Chantry.
The blood splatters on her armor are drying when she pushes open the large doors at the top of the stairs of the Keep. The doors creak as she pushes her weight against them just wide enough to slip through the gap.
The majority of the city guard appears to be lying dead on the floor. There are bodies of citizens mixed in with the guards and she can tell not all of them were killed by magic. Her eyes follow the trail of the dead across the entry way and up the stairs to settle on a mage, standing at the railing. His face, deformed with the power he wields, stretches into a wide grimace when he spies her and she sighs. Her grip tightens on her daggers and she steadies her breathing, ready for the moment when she'll strike.
The mage is faster than she expects and he's summoned six shades on all her corners as she takes her first few steps forward. No time for sneaking around in the shadows now. Pushing off hard with her left foot she springs forward. Her first unlucky victim, the closest shade, receives both of her blades straight up its front. She wounds, rather than kills, and keeps moving. Fire balls are striking the ground at her feet. She spins and jumps to the stairs. One more jump sends her careening over the last railing and into the mage.
The end is bloody for him and excruciatingly painful for her. His hand presses to her chest and releases a ball of something as she brings her blades down into his shoulders. Elissa flies backwards and the mage crumples.
She can't breathe.
The something inside her is tightening itself around her heart and it beats out that unforgettable rhythm of panic . . . death panic . . . death . . . panic panic. Her vision narrows on the shades closing in on her and this is it. Her fingers find the smoke bomb at the small of her back and she uses every last ounce on her strength to get away from her attackers. The door to the guard room gives way under her kick and she locks it behind her.
She can no longer stand. Her body resists the commands she gives for movement and slides to the floor. As the adrenaline of her initial push drains from her body she feels every cut and burn on her body from the mage and something warm is dripping out from beneath her armor. Her eyes follow the story of her life as it slowly drains out of her and pools underneath one hand. This is it.
Elissa can no longer keep her eyes open. Reality blinks away from her as she whispers the only thing that she can think of anymore.
Alistair.
