Look at me, I actually got a chapter done. Sorry for the delay!
Was listening to "Braving the Seas" by Myrath, and thus went a little "overboard" (hehe) with the ocean metaphors. Anyway. Hope you enjoy!
Down With the Ship
Corvis was having a blast out on the battlefield.
Quite literally.
There was an almost carnal rawness to the blazing fire rushing through his blood, surging up through his hands, exploding onto the battlefield—and if there was anything Corvis loved, it was burning things. The heat sang within him, thrummed around him like the beating of a war drum, as he arced his staff around and sent a searing half-moon of vermilion flame into a small wave of approaching genlocks.
The creatures blew backwards, limbs askew, their dying grunts hitting Corvis's ears. He smirked, twisting, shooting a fireball into a hurlock that was just about to charge a woman with ginger hair; the thing blasted sideways with the impact with the unmistakable hiss of sizzling flesh.
The woman regarded Corvis with a sour you-could've-killed-me-you-crazy-mage look, but left it at that, charging off to swing her blade at a genlock with a bow.
A noise caught his attention, and he turned, seeing a hurlock surging towards him with a gnarled mace held high in the air—an obvious attempt to startle him. But Corvis was no skittish, sheltered spellcaster; he took a step back to brace himself and blocked the blow with the shaft of his staff.
"Is that your best, cazzo?" he taunted, backing up and readying a spell. The darkspawn regarded him with soulless dark eyes and a mouth gaped open in a sort of maniacal grin, saliva dribbling down its jaws. "Eh? I've been hit harder with a bouquet of tulips!"
True story—children of foreign merchants in Denerim got strange things thrown at them, sometimes. Then there were the chunks of pie, and the actual live pig… But that hardly mattered now, did it?
Just as the darkspawn swung at him again, Corvis pushed both of his hands forward and shot a fireball into its chest. There was a crackling and spitting noise as the fire sank its scorching claws into the creature's warty hide, and it fell backwards with a nasty, sustained gurgle.
Corvis allowed himself a deep breath, surveying the battlefield for just a second.
It wasn't looking good, to put it bluntly. Ostagar's forces were thinning rapidly, many of them cut down like animals and bleeding out on the soggy valley floor.
He slammed his staff down and sent some chain lightning ricocheting through a clump of darkspawn, watching it sear them alive and drop them like flies.
Every time he caught sight of a warrior fighting nearby, or a rogue, or occasionally another mage, they all had the exact same expression on their faces—bleak despair. He knew he was probably the only one out here actually enjoying himself to some degree, yet it didn't take a genius to see that the current battle morale was scraping rock bottom, as were the numbers.
And the darkspawn forces weren't thinning at nearly the same rate. They seemed to keep coming, swarming like mosquitoes, their perpetual stink choking the valley air.
He coughed once, then again, then shot another fireball.
Something caught his attention, a speck of searing orange in his peripheral vision, far above the battlefield. He squinted against the rain and looked up, almost expecting a darkspawn emissary's firebolt from above.
But it was the beacon. High at the top of the Tower of Ishal, a roaring display of vermilion firelight. Corvis briefly watched the fire bite into the air a little higher, and he half-smiled, realizing Palla and Alistair had at least reached the top of the tower.
A smattering of whoops and cheers rolled through the valley from the remaining people fighting there, those who had seen the beacon light. Corvis could even feel the morale rise, warriors' hearts thumping harder and stronger all around him.
Teyrn Loghain's massive army would be there in just a moment, sweeping through the valley and taking the darkspawn by surprise.
Any minute now.
He twisted, hearing a noise behind him, and promptly set a clump of hurlocks aflame, barely checking to see if the fire had actually felled them. His attention was on where he knew Loghain's army would come from.
Any minute now.
"We're overwhelmed!" cried a rogue in leather armor, his cheeks ruddy from exertion. "Fall back!"
All around the battlefield, morale was plummeting as quickly as it had risen, sinking like a ship with a gouging wound in her hull. Corvis could hear those same two words, "fall back," echoing around the sodden valley walls, plaintive cries amongst the rhythmic peppering of rainfall.
"Basta!" he yelled, his own voice rough and scratchy (a tragedy, really, for an Antivan accent lose its silken flow). Enough. "We'll lose Ostagar if we turn tail!"
A couple of soldiers whipped their heads in his direction, briefly, conflicted and considering. Yet it was like the beacon Palla lit had signaled them to run with their tails between their legs rather than wait for Loghain's forces.
Which had most definitely never come, much to Corvis's growing disgust.
Just as he was about to cup his hands for another fireball, something smashed into his side; he lost his grip on his staff as his body whiplashed sideways, tumbling along the slick, rocky ground until he braced his arms down and forcibly halted himself.
Maker, what a blow; his head spinning dangerously, Corvis got to his knees and struggled to see without his vision bucking and swaying like a ship in a storm. Through squinted eyes he saw a hurlock warrior with a heavy iron shield approaching him, its grotesque face tweaked into a sadistic grin.
He cupped his hands close to his belly, every sense reeling. His mana pool didn't feel depleted just yet, but it was hard to concentrate on summoning a spell with all his bells rung like that. His arms visibly shook with the pull of raw magic, but nothing was coming.
The hurlock swung its rough-hewn sword.
Corvis jolted backwards and blocked the swing from slicing his head off with the side of his metal-reinforced bracer. A lightning bolt of adrenaline through his body got him to his feet without his equilibrium being able to compensate. He swayed briefly on his feet, instinct helping him dodge backwards and out of the way of another swing. Snapping his teeth together, he thrust his hand forward and hurled a searing ball of shock at the greasy, warty creature.
Its body absorbed the shock with a hissing and snapping noise, and the darkspawn writhed on its feet, taking one last step forward before it collapsed to the ground in a shower of sparks.
Well, that had swiftly taken all the fun out of fighting.
That, and the fact that the bulk of their forces had still never come.
Corvis briefly curled his upper lip in loathing, red-hot odium coursing through his blood. Whatever motives Loghain had for withholding his forces, he'd effortlessly crippled the remainder of the soldiers here. Looking around through blurry eyes, through a film of evening rain, Corvis realized he was one of the only non-darkspawn left on the battlefield.
He could see a few metallic specks in the distance as people fled the valley left and right, just dots among the perpetual sea of black. But when his foot accidentally caught on a corpse's arm, he realized where most of the soldiers were—here, still, slain and forgotten bodies on the battlefield.
It was no use. And Corvis was no martyr.
They'd lose Ostagar. Much as Corvis praised his own magical ability, even he couldn't stand there in the state he was in and stem the tide of darkspawn. Hopefully the beasts would be satisfied with their conquest for a time…but Corvis remembered Duncan saying they'd sweep northwards if their advances weren't blocked here in Ostagar Valley.
Where was Duncan? Or King Cailin? Corvis picked up a jog, tiredly throwing flames at a couple darkspawn lurching his way. One didn't just abandon their higher-ups in the heat of survival.
Something caught his attention immediately—the steaming body of a giant ogre, looking almost like a mountain rather than a corpse, and a small form with light blonde hair crouching in the mud near it.
Ellie. Corvis recognized her immediately. How she'd survived up until this point, he didn't know, but he picked up his pace and ran to her.
She was huddled over a body, he realized, frantically pushing her hands into its chest, the golden glow of healing surging around her arms. Yet the body didn't move. Corvis noticed the dark skin and the beard and the Rivaini armor, and his spirits sank even further.
Merda. Without Duncan…and it didn't seem like there were any Wardens left here, aside from him. He couldn't spot Shesi out in the valley—not that she'd be easily spotted. Nor could he see the blazing red of Palla's hair. Either she was fighting somewhere he couldn't see…or she and Alistair hadn't made it out of the tower.
"He's wounded…badly…he was fighting that…ogre," Ellie was babbling, her eyes glassy, as she pushed her hands down and kept trying to heal Duncan's prone form. "I didn't reach him in time…"
"He's dead, bambina," Corvis said. He wouldn't mince words, not now.
"No," Ellie sobbed. "Just a little more, Corvis…I can—"
"Testadura! We're losing the battle!" he yelled, snapping her out of her shaky trance.
She finally looked away from Duncan, finally regarded the rushing tide of darkspawn that swept through the valley like a coastal tsunami, and her face turned stark white.
There wouldn't be any more heroics down here. Just rushing face-first into a gruesome demise. And Corvis wasn't too keen on ending up as yet another corpse in the mud.
He held out a hand to Ellie. "Let's go. There's no winning here. We'll find another way."
She looked up at him with terrified chocolate eyes, and gripped his hand tight.
Shesi played dead.
All battle sounds had ceased about ten minutes ago. The screams and groans and grunts and clashes of metal had given way to a sort of sickening silence, one that reeked of the foul stench of enemy victory.
She'd been cut down just as everyone had started to sprint from the valley like a herd of spooked halla. A deep gash in her left thigh leaked blood all over the mud beneath her, lancing pain through her leg, and she knew she should get off the ground and clean it. But if she got up too hastily, the darkspawn tromping all around her would finish the job.
Lying on her belly with her chin tucked down, she opened her eyes just a crack so she could see through the blurriness of her own eyelashes.
The creatures hadn't wasted any time. She could see their dirtied boots all over, see them start the task of hauling the bodies into heaping piles. A grim task, normally, but these bastards seemed to be enjoying it.
The air was so choked with the smell of death and decay that Shesi wanted to vomit. But she wouldn't.
She had no illusions of surprising the darkspawn horde by jumping to her feet and defeating them all in one glorious act of battle. That sort of thing was for children's tales. A hero might have tried, maybe, but Shesi was no hero.
A flash of gold caught her attention, and she ever-so-slightly shifted her head so she could see what it was.
Cailin's armor. No doubt. There was a clump of darkspawn crooning over the gilt breastplate, digging through the pile of bracers and gauntlets and greaves and buckles like it was a heap of golden treasure.
If they'd divested the King of his armor, then he was assuredly dead. Shesi cursed inwardly. Ferelden had suffered a great, undignified blow here at Ostagar. She wanted desperately to believe not all of the Wardens had died along with the King…but she couldn't muster up the optimism to do so.
Shit. She'd gained a new five-member clan, and they'd been ripped from her all in the course of a night. The sense of being horribly, awfully alone flooded through her, and she clenched her jaw, trying not to react to the new burst of pain.
Hands grabbed her ankle and started dragging her, and Shesi closed her eyes, trying to act as boneless as possible.
Pebbles scraped her through her ripped armor as the creature dragged her, but she wouldn't make a noise.
The darkspawn dragged her for about a minute, then scooped her up and roughly flung her. Shesi did her best to act like a corpse as she felt herself land on the apex of a mound of human bodies, letting her limbs lie askew and her head fall back. It was her saving grace that she'd landed on her back; if she'd been forced to fall headfirst on a dead body, she might've retched.
Boots clinked away, the noise diminishing, and Shesi risked opening her eyes to near slits.
Immediately she saw a flash of red near her, at the edge of the pile, and her throat nearly closed. Palla. But another glance showed her an older woman with wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, and Shesi could breathe again.
If the darkspawn threw a body on top of her, she'd never be able to escape without being fatally slowed down. She waited, watching their pattern, memorizing which darkspawn came to her pile and when.
Why they hadn't yet sensed she was still alive, she didn't know. Perhaps the victory-high had clogged their senses.
She waited just a minute more, until she had a wide berth around her, then rose and leapt off the pile in one smooth motion.
Her cut leg nearly buckled beneath her as she landed, but she wouldn't let it. One nearby genlock grunted the alarm, and several of them turned to her, letting out gargled war cries and raising their weapons high.
An arrow whipped past her, missing its mark by a mere foot, as she darted away and found her stride. Hot blood pulsed from her thigh with each step, but she ignored it.
She'd have to get clear of the valley, or they'd box her in and cut her down—for good, this time. Sucking in a ragged breath, she tore past a clump of warriors and settled into a sprint. Wind whipped through her tangled hair, whistling past her ears, drowning out the noises of darkspawn running after her. But no one could catch a Dalish elf; not even a wounded one.
There. The edge of the forest. Shesi darted right into the treeline and barreled through the oaks and sycamores, cleaner air filling her lungs. She knew she was heading southward now, so she'd have to bank sideways, once she was clear of the valley. Loam and dead leaves kicked up behind her, twigs snapping under her nearly bare feet. Her limp, barely noticeable before, grew more and more pronounced as she went.
She didn't stop running.
