Arcane Warrior
Chapter 8: The Deep Breath Before the Plunge, part 2
Sleeping at Ostagar necessitated long thick wool clothes during the night. The chill of the mountain cold rushed through the broken walls of the ruined fortress as swift and startling as an arrow. Yet, despite this, Alim and Marian had only the wool padding separating their bodies from the ground, and a blanket separating their naked bodies from the cold morning air.
Alim awoke slowly, his eyes bleary from sleeping in a tent when he was used to the comforts of the circle tower. Although he couldn't deny the comfort he was feeling now, cuddled up against his new lover as he was.
Alim had slept on his side with his arms around Hawke and his head on her chest, she was lying on her back with her arm around his neck. When he looked up from his position against her breasts, he could see her clearly with his enhanced elven night vision, the campfire long dead and with only the moonlight creeping against the thick blanket of the comfortable bed, dimly illuminating their tangled forms under the blanket.
He smiled as the memories of last night hit him. With those memories wrapped around him like a security blanket, he wrapped his arms tighter around Hawke and snuggled deeper into her chest and drifted back into the fade.
He groaned as he awakened once again.
When Alim woke up at pre-dawn he opened his eyes to a dim tent. There was a chill to the night air but when he shivered, it wasn't from the cold but rather the sight of the mass underneath the blanket. Accompanying a pleasure he was still trying to determine, there was a moving humanoid shape underneath the blankets, moving and creeping around his lap.
Warning, lime begins now
His cock was currently enjoying the sensations of a wet, warm tongue dancing and wiggling along his length, tracing nonsensical designs along his member. A hand was gripping his manhood around the base as it slowly stroked him, using spit for a lubricant to keep the touch slick and sweet.
Alim's head was swimming as he woke, barely able to cope with the feel of his cock being teased and delighted under the covers. A hand was cupping his scrotum and teasing him, while he felt what could only be a warm, wiggling tongue drawing lines up and down his shaft.
He moaned at the ministrations, not sure whether or not he was still in the fade and these sensations were the work of a desire demon, or if he was in the physical world and he was being delightfully woken up by his lover.
He bit his lip to avoid calling out as the tongue played with his foreskin. The stroking continued and he soon felt a mouth move entirely over his shaft; starting to take him in slow, sweeping strokes. His inches disappeared into a wet mouth with tight walls suckling against it, and the sensation was almost overwhelmingly joyful.
Alim's hands lowered to the head in his lap, pressing his fingers in through the fabric of the blanket. The notable lack of horns told him that he was in the physical world, and that it was indeed Marian giving him this wonderful treatment. Though he couldn't see her he delighted in the sensations, and in his mind he pictured beautiful Marian with her pink lips kissing and swirling her tongue against his shaft.
In Alim's mind spit covered Hawke's red cheeks, and a look in her eyes that spoke of intense desire.
Perhaps, by the time the morning horn blew, he would have her writhing beneath him again as well? His throat tightened at the thought, and he could feel his cock twitch in hungry desire as he imagined the sight of the warrior would be; bent over in the dim pre-dawn light with her glistening slit, waiting and begging to be claimed once again.
Fully rested but still somewhat spent as he was, it didn't take much longer for him to reach his peak underneath the covers, and the hand jerking his spit-covered cock started to speed up to encourage him. Lips kissed and a tongue danced, and when Alim finally started to unleash his payload, his cum filled underneath the blanket with a sticky mess. He was groaning in mad desire as his length continued to pulse out cream, and he could feel his twitching tip rub against nearly everything. The fabric of the blanket, and then to a warm cheek. A set of kissing lips with a teasing tongue, and then with a thrust of his hips he could feel his tip lost in thin wisps of hair. He had rocked in climax and when his sex finally stopped, he could feel the cum oozing down his shaft, rolling finally to the fingers still gripping him at the base.
"Oh Hawke…" He finally spoke, licking his lips in bliss. He felt slightly ashamed of himself for having made such a mess, and made a mental note to take the bedclothes down to the nearest stream as soon as possible. Of course, he had finished on a woman's face and hair (and even her breasts and stomach) before, but those times were more out of the heat of the moment than out of an uncoordinated accident such as this time.
As he was lying back in his post-orgasmic daze, she scooted herself upward and kissed him deeply. He returned her affection without hesitation, once again tasting himself on her tongue, and once again not pulling away.
He might have disliked the taste at one point in time, but one could not be friends with the problem child known as Anders and not grow to enjoy certain activities.
When Marian pulled out of their kiss, she sat up and straddled his waist so that his iron hard erection was wedged firmly in the cleft of her shapely arse. He got even harder when his eyes took in her form, illuminated by the dim light shining in through the walls of the tent. Her smooth pale skin was coated in a fine sheen of sweat, indicating that she was hard at 'work' long before he awoke, and coating her face and parts of her hair was a liberal webbing of his white goo
The image driving his instincts wild, he rose into a sitting position, using her shoulders as handholds, he began to draw his tongue up and down her face, licking up heaping mouthfuls of his own warm fluids from her creamy skin. Hawke looked on at his odd behavior, but any misgivings she might have had were wiped from her mind when, whenever his mouth became full he would pull her in for a steamy lip lock, pushing the strangely sweet liquid into her mouth with his tongue.
Finished with his process of feeding her his spunk one mouthful at a time, his lips and tongue busied themselves with her breasts while his hands traveled down to her hips and, lifting her up with her aiding him by engaging her thigh muscles, he lowered her sopping wet pussy down his turgid length till their hips met with a wet clap.
But before they could begin their rocking movements, the morning horn blew one long, loud note, signalling the army camp's wake up call. Marian and Alim both groaned in frustration before pulling away from each other to begin the day.
End of Lime
After a cold bath to calm their raging libidos, courtesy of Alim conjuring a mid-sized orb of water which he then swirled rapidly across their skin to clear away the sweat and grime that had accumulated there from the past day, they helped each other get dressed and exited the tent and headed down to the training range.
Alim and Hawke started out the day with a generous helping of breakfast, although when he was offered meat he politely declined, explaining that elves could not digest meat or dairy products, that the unique inner workings of the elven body got all of the needed nutrients from fruits and vegetables.
Although this factoid was more commonly known among the dalish and the more educated circle elves. City elves generally did not know this fact about themselves and so when they ate meat, their bodies being unable to digest it, it would instead remain in their bodies until it rotted away inside them, the extra weight they would gain from this made them weak, slow and sluggish, giving rise to the human belief that elves were lazy or unintelligent.
After they had their fill of food and gossip, they moved on to the archery range. After a few hours and many instances of healing magic used on sore and bleeding fingertips, Alim showed marked improvement with his bow, showing his prodigious talents with archery.
Something that should surprise no one, as despite the many years humans had spent denying and refuting the fact, it was well known that archery had been invented by the people of Elvhenan. Since time immemorial, elves had always shown prodigious talent as archers, though most equated this with cowardice in the face of close quarters combat... nonetheless, Alim showing talent with a bow was nothing special, despite Hawke's claims otherwise.
Although he had to admit that, with only a day and a half of formal training, he was doing better than other elves would in the same amount of time, at least if his grandfather's stories were anything to go by.
His improvement, while impressive, was not fast enough for his liking, for this was already the second day since the war meeting. The darkspawn horde would be upon them tomorrow or that very evening, and he needed to improve as fast as possible. It may have been a bit arrogant of him to think so, and even he did not believe it because of how many other soldiers there were at Ostagar, some even stronger than he, but because of his unique skill set, he truly was their trump card.
Or at least Duncan said so. Not to him, but he had overheard him say such in hushed tones to King Cailan and General Loghain.
After they left the Archery range they moved on to the sword range where things got a bit interesting.
Just when he had unsheathed Glamdring to spar with Hawke again, he heard a pair of feet stomping over to them, the right foot being heavier than the left implying a large weapon, and when he head the whistle of a sword being swung he pirouetted on his heel and parried the telegraphed swing of a greatsword.
'What is it with humans and their obsession with size?'
"Carver!" He heard the admonition from Hawke, but the man in question simply growled out angrily "not now sister!"
So surprised was he by the impromptu dual between himself and this snarling beast of a man that he found himself speechless.
Not that he spoke much in the first place.
He blocked an overhead vertical swing, dodged when the human tried punching him, parried a left horizontal swing and jumped over Carver's head and kicked him solidly between the shoulder blades.
He turned to face Carver when he landed and firmed his stance even as the man stumbled and turned to face him with a great deal less grace and coordination.
Alim breathed out slowly as it became clear to him that this was a spar only in his thoughts, in Carver's opinion this was a hot blooded fight between men.
He briefly entertained the notion that Carver was simply being an overprotective brother, but given the way that he seemed to interact with his sister, he doubted that was the case. Though, never having had a sibling, he didn't think he would be able to tell one way or the other. Either way, he was now involved in a fight with naught but pride on the line with this smelly man-beast.
He didn't blame Carver for not smelling particularly good, the water in mountain streams were ice cold and without healing magic one could fairly easily get pneumonia. But that may have been a non-issue, he had a feeling that Carver didn't like to bathe even when he had warm water handy. This guess was reinforced by the look in Carver's eyes; wild, uncontrolled, and his form was, while good, more along the lines of a berserker.
Then again, that wasn't entirely true. Among the many various fighting disciplines that existed across Thedas, the berserker was a very powerful discipline. They trained so much and so often, that their each and every move is recorded in their muscle memory so that when they go into their famed blind rages they are just as if not more dangerous than a levelheaded warrior of the same skill level. The ideal was to utilize the power intense emotions like anger gave to a persons attacks, the ability to ignore pain like it wasn't even there, and the sheer unpredictability of their attacks in a potent combination.
Carver however, as skilled a swordsman as he was, wasn't as controlled. He was more of a wannabe beserker if Alim had to venture a guess.
He telegraphed his moves before he made them, and his swings were strong but uncontrolled. Given all this information he theorized that Carver chose the greatsword not because it was the weapon that suited him best, but because it made him appear intimidating. Not that the gambit was an ineffective one, when one saw a warrior use such a large blade without buckling under the weight they became frightened at the blatant display of strength, but Carver clearly did not have the skill to back up that intimidating posture of his.
He tried to keep his disappointment off his face, for despite all his nobility or knightly bearing, his bestial instincts were screaming at him to find the strongest of opponents and do glorious battle with them to prove himself as the strongest... but among the three people at the center of the sword range the strongest was Marian, he himself was not far beneath her, but Carver was a mere ankle-biter caught up in the territorial dispute of two mighty mabari warhounds.
Carver attacked him again, stabbing at him with his blade, a failed gambit as Alim simply jumped onto the sword and somersaulted over Carver's head again.
'I understand now' he thought, finally able to make sense of this nonsensical situation. 'He's got something to prove, it isn't that I slept with his sister. He's afraid, all of us are, but...' he looked around at the faces staring at the two combatants, mostly human, some dwarves and a few elves, and turned his eyes back to Carver.
'Sorry about this Carver, but I've got to end it now before this goes any further!' Were his thoughts as he sheathed Glamdring, bringing surprised and worried gasps out of the crowd, and he used his superior agility to get in past Carver's defense and hook his left foot around Carver's right ankle and pull causing the large human to trip, he struck the boy's right wrist causing him to drop the greatsword, and he stuck his left arm behind Carver's lower back and rested his right hand on his chest, and used Carver's lack of balance to flip him onto his back.
"What in the bloody hell was that!?" asked an enraged Carver in a futile attempt to cover up his bruised pride. "Mind your tongue, there are ladies present."
Both Marian and Jena who were standing at opposite ends of the gathered crowd smiled at his chivalry. Though both of them had fouler vocabularies than the relatively mild words used by Carver, but they appreciated the sentiment of his words if not the words themselves.
Carver growled and entertained the notion of grabbing his sword and disemboweling the smug little elf, but refrained from it. He was a knight, or at least fancied himself as such, so held himself in check and simply grabbed his sword and held it against his shoulder in a non-aggressive posture. Alim, trying to put an end to any rivalry that might develop between them because of this fiasco, stepped closer to Carver and extended the proverbial olive branch in the form of his open hand. But Carver, the brat that he was, slapped Alim's hand away and stormed off, the gathered crowd parting ways to make way for him.
Alim sighed in resignation and turned to Marian who looked to be torn between staying and going to console her brother. "I apologize for all this Hawke" he said, knowing how embarrassed she must be, he had felt the same when Amalia and Zelda spent all those months passive aggressively glaring at each other.
"No, it's fine." She said, though he could tell it wasn't. He sighed, he knew how she felt, torn between two parties and unable to get through to either... well, one of them. He just counted her lucky that she was torn between a lover and a sibling rather than two lovers... the situation wasn't quite as awkward and much easier to resolve.
Given time, that is. Time that they might not even have.
"Go to your brother Hawke, I should get back to the wardens, it is likely that they have some training or information for me about my new position." Marian looked pleased at his help with her personal issues, if a little disappointed that she couldn't spend more time with him.
He was honestly surprised by the situation he found himself in, again. Even among all this danger and tension, there was family and relationship drama. Of course, it could just be people trying to distance themselves from the darkspawn on their doorstep, seeking moments of levity in dark times as Irving had said. He was honestly relieved by that, when he had first looked up at the imposing walls of Ostagar, he had thought that all the people within would be just as grim.
Their hopes and will torn down by the specter of the Blight, but what he found was just the opposite. He himself was an introvert and thus did not engage in small talk or gossip as most people did, but within these hallowed halls he had found very few of the solemn sentinels he had expected, rather almost everyone he had met was hopeful. Perhaps it was as Flemeth had said, that these people were underestimating the danger that the blight presented...
Or perhaps these people were just hopeful that they would defeat the enemy and return home to their families...
He desperately hoped that it was the latter.
"Yes, I..." Marian said, hesitatingly, "I suppose I'll go do that then." "I hope you get through to him Marian" he said, thinking of his cousin, Seri, he didn't even know if she was still alive. He was conflicted on the matter of her, on one hand he hoped that she was dead, at the Maker's side and free of all pain and suffering, but on the other hand he hoped she still lived so that he could reconnect with her.
When he was small he thought of her as a sister, he still did, and they were the best of friends. He could not imagine being rivals with your own sibling... for a brief moment he felt pity for Marian, but quickly reminded himself that not only would she not want his pity, but that there were those more deserving.
She rested her hand on his shoulder and pressed her rosy lips on his cheek in a chaste kiss, and when she pulled away they smiled reassuringly at each other, silently wishing each other good luck in the present drama and the looming threat of the darkspawn. She turned and left the arena in the direction her brother stormed off in, and unseen by him was Jena running off to the warden tent at their show of affection.
Later that day, Alim found himself walking the misty marshlands of the Korkari Wilds again. He was right about what he should expect at the Gray Warden camp, on both accounts. They gave him a journal which contained a section especially for darkspawn, and the various incarnations of such, and a great variety of spells invented by warden mages which he attached to a special apparatus on his belt.
The book itself was surprisingly ornate for a travel log, with intricate steel on the binding and edges of the book along with a clasp to keep it closed and the warden insignia on the cover and blue leather covering the wooden construction of the book itself, it was moderately thick and enchanted to resist damage and wear. And the apparatus was a simple affair, with iron loops for his belt, and locking hinges that hooked onto the spine of the book.
As for the training he was to go through, the traditional training regimen was to walk down a winding path, fighting several fully trained wardens along the way, with Commander Duncan as the final opponent. The traditional training regimen was put on hold however, as Duncan had sensed another darkspawn scouting party in the wilds. In compromise, he was to eliminate them himself, with his trainers hanging back and watching, saying they would only interfere if his life was in danger.
His attention was drawn to the left of his current path when he felt a steady pulse. He wondered if he wasn't already starting to sense them as Duncan said he would soon enough. Tightening his grip on his sword and staff, left the path in the direction the pulse came from, his racing heart comforted by the crunching of grass and sloshing of water, signs that the others were watching him still.
Soon he came upon a hill, on the other side of which he could feel the origins of the pulse. He crouched down low so he could creep over the hill without alerting them to his presence, though he forgot one very crucial fact. Grey Wardens could sense the darkspawn, but the same was true in reverse.
So as he was creeping up the hill, he was surprised when a hurlock alpha crested the hill in a full charge, greatsword and war axe at the ready. Surprised though he was, Alim instantly sprang to his feet.
He knocked two arrows onto his bow and held it horizontally, pulled back as Hawke had taught him to, and let go. He had aimed for the eyes of the charging alpha, but he wasn't yet skilled enough to pull off such a pinpoint shot, and hit two hurlock archers instead, and by happy coincidence they seemed to be the only long range fighters that this particular scouting party had.
He managed to kill a few more before they crashed down upon him, three genlocks, four hurlocks, two shrieks, and a ghoul surprisingly enough. Before they crashed down upon him, he dropped his bow on one of the more solid looking patches of ground and picked up his staff and drew his sword. He ducked under a heavy handed swing by the alpha and, crouching low, thrust his sword into the pelvis of a hurlock, and letting go of the handle he twisted around, and grabbing the hilt once more, he pulled up on it, cutting cleanly through the monster vertically, the sword exited the monster's shoulder before he swung it down diagonally of front of him, opening a gash in the alpha's back, but not killing it, and bisecting a genlock next to it.
The alpha turned to skewer him with its greatsword, but was blown away and stunned by a blast of telekinetic energy. Alim inhaled deeply, grateful for the bit of breathing room the mind blast gained him. Sheathing his sword, he lifted his staff in both hands and cast a wide area blizzard smell in an attempt at ending the battle quickly, as the exertion of the day was finally starting to wear on him. A bright white-blue glow started to shine from the top of his staff, and starting from that glow, ice crystals began to gather on the staff. He started it into a spin, and just as the darkspawn began to regain their bearings and charge at him once again, the glow exploded into a storm of ice, snow and wind so intense that it slowed their charge, blew back the surrounding trees, and even coated the darkspawn in a layer of ice.
The blizzard halted, leaving the ground covered in a layer of snow and the genlocks frozen solid, while the hurlocks and the alpha were already starting to struggle. Quickly, before they could break free, he used made use of his Spirit magic once more, encasing them in prisons of telekinetic energy. He started to squeeze his hand, tightening the bars of their cages, causing the genlocks to shatter into bloody fragments almost instantly, the hurlocks struggled but went all the same, all but one of them shattering, while the last of their number managing to free himself of the ice, but succumbed to the telekinetic hold as it was crushed to death where it stood.
The alpha however, broke away from his magical hold entirely and rushed at him once again, although it was slowed down somewhat by the gash in its back. Ignoring the burning muscles in his arms and torso, he adjusted his grip on his staff and drew his sword and parried the axe with his staff and blocked the greatsword with Glamdring.
Pushing with Glamdring, he tried to keep the alpha occupied with his left side while he stuck the head of his staff underneath the axe blade and tried to twist it out of the alpha's grip, but its strength proved too great, so he jumped away and, dropping his staff and maneuvering it out of the way with his foot, bolts of blue lightning arced off his fingers and into the darkspawn.
Muscles locking up, the alpha drove itself toward him in slow staggering movements driven solely by rage, he was about to finish it off before he felt another pulse coming up rapidly from below him. Sidestepping, he barely managed to avoid being cleaved in half by a shriek, one far larger than the others he had seen, a shriek alpha. With a loud screech that almost disoriented him, the shriek almost gutted him with one of its wrist mounted blades if he hadn't thrusted his buttocks backwards and sucked in his belly.
Using another mind blast to give himself some more breathing room, he panted while thinking on his next move. He didn't have enough mana left to use another wide area attack, the list of techniques he could use with his sword was limited as his muscles were severely protesting any further movement, and because of the intense wind of his blizzard, there was nothing around him that he could use to gain himself an advantage.
He panicked when they began to charge at him again, and used his remaining mana to create twenty blue spectral swords, slowly rotating around him. With a wave of his hand at the rapidly approaching darkspawn, they flew forward and honed in on them. The hurlock, being the slower of the two, was impaled and killed, while the shriek managed to evade them and continue rushing toward him. The shriek attacked him with a cross-slash, using its wrist mounted blades like a pair of shears, but he dropped to the ground and slithered between its legs and he picked up the hurlock's axe.
By the time the shriek alpha managed to turn around, he had already beheaded it in a heavy swing of the massive axe. All of the darkspawn dead, he simply stood there on alert, waiting to feel another pulse besides the ones that told him the other wardens were in the tree fourteen feet away from him, panting heavily and waiting for his racing heart to calm down.
When the adrenaline stopped rushing through his veins, he suddenly felt the fatigue of the day come to a head, and his eyes rolled up into his head in a dead faint. Before everything went black though, he felt himself fall into someones arms, and his last sight was bountiful dark skinned cleavage framed by blue cloth.
"Duncan..." said Warden-Constable James, one of Duncan's oldest friends, said. Duncan nodded approvingly at their unconscious comrade and said "I know. It's just as expected." He smiled, looking down at the elf being cradled lovingly in Jena's arms with a longing look on her face.
Their newest comrade showed strength, determination, creativity and resourcefulness, honor and nobility of character. All the qualities he was looking for in a successor. Sadly those qualities weren't easy to come by in a single person, one of his main fears regarding this Blight was that he would perish without passing down leadership of the Ferelden wardens to someone he found worthy of the position.
'But now, I found the one.'
