Author's Note

Hey all! Got another update for you. I'm sure you were all waiting to see how this fight turned out.

As always, a huge thank you goes out to my readers/followers/lurkers, etc. You're the best, and feel free to fire suggestions my way. Just... remember the T rating. :P

Enjoy,

- BB

Disclaimer: It's all BioWare's.

What Happens in Orlais
Part Two: Victory! ... Sort-of.

Shouting a vicious battle cry, both Champion and ex-slave leapt into opposite directions. Fenris incapacitated a handful of Crows with one swipe of his massive sword while Hawke tossed a smoke grenade into the fray of those approaching her. Diving into a somersault and feeling her blades rip into flesh as she came back up to her feet, she pivoted on her heel and swiped her dagger across the knee of another assailant, slipping it into the opening under his arm when he went down. The corner of her mouth tugged upwards in a feral grin as she felt the blade puncture flesh, grind unpleasantly against his ribcage, and finally enter his heart.

She didn't have time to catch her breath. Feeling someone behind her, she flipped one dagger in her hand while pulling the other free and thrust it backwards into the man sneaking up on her, feeling it hit home. He doubled over, placing his face in the prime position for just punishment delivered by her unforgiving elbow.

The battle continued for far longer than it should have. The Crows just kept coming. Among other minor cuts and bruises, she'd taken a brutal kick to the chest, and was sure she'd be nursing at least a few cracked ribs when all this was over.

Her mabari, Alden, was fighting his own battle, taking down archers and those on the outskirts. Occasionally, she would hear his menacing growl above the terrified screams of his prey making its way across the courtyard as he took them down.

Behind her, Fenris let out a shout of anger (not pain, thankfully), and some of the attention was diverted from her over to him. Hawke only hoped he could handle the extra attention, and wasn't needlessly putting himself in more danger in order to protect her.

She risked a glance back at him. His brands were flaring brighter than any torch, almost blinding in the night. But she could see he was beginning to tire, and there was a nasty gash across the left side of his face, dangerously close to his eye. She was wearing down as well, and her throbbing ribs certainly weren't helping her. But they were in no position to consider themselves on the winning side. For every Crow they took down, another seemed to join the battle. There were just too many of them. They started to push her backwards, so she met Fenris' back again, crouching low on the balls of her feet, breathing heavily. Figures, she thought begrudgingly to herself, I spend the better half of my life fighting demons, blood mages, a qunari Arishok, and a Maker-damned high dragon, only to be assassinated by Antivan Crows, at the bidding of someone too cowardly to fight me in person.

Fate is a finicky bitch.

Fenris bolstered himself, and she heard his voice behind her, strengthened with a resolved finality, "Estieve fortis, cordil mei.*" He muttered in Arcanum, "I will not allow them to take you. You will not die here."

He drew himself up again, but before he could leap back into the fray, she reached behind her and grasped his wrist. He froze as she turned to look at him briefly over her shoulder, "Neither will you. Na via lerno victoria, right?"

He sighed, before nodding slowly and lifting his sword as she let out the breath she'd been holding and collected strength from his resolve. Reaching to unclip a small jar of powder from her belt, sealed and the only one of its kind that she kept with her due to its volatility, she gripped it with white knuckles, and her eyes narrowed on the approaching assailants.

Make it count, Daedra.

She wound her arm back for a moment, testing its familiar weight, before flinging it into the crowd, where it exploded in a gale of smoke and flames.

There was a moment where everything just stopped, as she considered just where, exactly, she was. The logical part of her brain was screaming at her. She wasn't in Kirkwall anymore, where most everything was stone. Oh Maker. Oh shit, shit, shit! I just smashed an extremely volatile, extremely flammable and potent bomb in the courtyard of the University of Orlais! Please don't burn the place down please don't burn the place down please don't burn the place down. Why, oh why am I such an idiot!

Luckily, the assassins were in the clearing, where very few trees and other flammable objects lingered and most of the ground was paved with cobblestones. So there was little to worry about with the wind as slight as it was.

Screaming set time to moving again, as the flames licked at the assassins' clothing, so she used the distraction to her advantage, taking down some of the Crows who had managed to escape the blaze. It seemed as if the Crows had stopped coming now, so she leapt back to Fenris' side this time, assisting him, and oh, how it felt good to be fighting by his side in tandem again. They complemented each other, and were virtually unstoppable when they fought together like this, which had to have been why they'd surrounded the two, hoping to divide their attention.

Clever.

Now that the numbers against them were fewer, however, Fenris and Hawke didn't have to worry so much about being flanked, as long as they kept moving, and things were finally flipping into their favour.

"How long have you been holding onto that?" Fenris asked from beside her, slamming the pommel of his greatsword into the chest of a Crow and knocking him off-balance, allowing her to take the final blow as she twisted behind the man and neatly drew her dagger across his throat.

"Long enough," she replied, pulling her dagger free from another man's back with a shrug, before pivoting and shoving a knee into the gut of an approaching assassin, "I thought it was about time to get rid of it."

"No kidding."

The leader finally joined the battle then, whipping out two stylized daggers that were as deadly as they were beautiful. Before she had a chance to react (Shit, he's fast!) he leapt at her, only to be intercepted by her faithful mabari, who tackled the man to the ground. His blades scrabbled out of his grasp, but Hawke was too busy defending herself from the two other Crows that had attacked her immediately afterwards to do anything to help.

As she risked a glance back towards him, she watched the Crow struggle against Alden's crushing weight and use his hands and arms to keep the wardog's powerful snapping jaws from making contact with its target at his jugular. As the dog's teeth finally clamped around the assassin's forearm, the man let out a shout, and Hawke returned to her respective battle, satisfied that the mabari would be successful.

Both elf and human were too preoccupied with their respective opponents to offer the dog attention or assistance, until the mabari's pained yelp shot across the clearing and directly into Hawke's ears. She whipped around, narrowly avoiding a debilitating attack from her opponent's blade as her attention was snatched away by her beloved companion, pinning the leading man to the ground with a blade puncturing his side. He must have reached one of the daggers he'd dropped.

Seeing red, she growled in fury, whirling back and kicking out her opponent's knee, driving her own into his nose with a sickening crunch as he doubled over, flicking back to face Alden again. His grip on the man's arm was strong, but his wound was steadily gushing blood, and he would not last much longer. Cursing bitterly, and enraged, she turned back and simultaneously flung her daggers into the chests of two assassins, not even waiting for them to die before grabbing a vial of poison from her belt and uncorking it with her teeth, flinging its contents into the eyes of another. He went down screaming bloody murder, his fingers clawing at his face.

Fenris' taunting, guttural cry rang out ahead of her, and the remaining half-dozen attackers diverted to him.

"Go!" He shouted when she glanced at him in trepidation, "I can handle them. Go!"

Hawke nodded briskly and rushed to her faithful hound's side, who limped off the man as she landed a swift kick to the side of the assassin's head, not trying to kill him, but uncaring if she did. He went out cold. Fenris was making quick work of the remaining assailants, but her hound was whining pitifully at her feet. The wound wasn't terrible from what she could see, but Alden seemed to be in excruciating pain.

Wary, she picked up the Crow's abandoned dagger and sniffed it. Poison. Cursing bitterly, she scrambled at her belt for elfroot potions and the antidotes to her own poisons, hoping that one of them might work. She carefully put the potion to her dog's mouth and slowly tipped it in. He lapped it up like the smart old mabari she knew him to be as she plucked the cork from the antidote she believed most likely to work, smearing some directly over the wound and pouring some into his mouth, "Hang in there, old boy. You'll get throu—"

"Daedra!"

The level of sudden panic in Fenris' voice had her whirling, only to see an assassin who had come out of nowhere, bearing down on her with such speed, she had no hope of moving in time to avoid his attack.

Just as she braced herself, something whizzed through the air above her, embedding itself solidly into the man's eye. She recognized the familiar hilt of her own shiv protruding from his head as he went limp, and she pushed his lifeless body out of the way before his momentum sent him careening into her. He landed unceremoniously on the ground with a heavy whump.

Fenris had finally managed to take down the assassins blocking him from her and was at her side in seconds, grabbing at her face and checking her over for injuries. She shook him away, pressing a health potion into his hands, and turned back to her fallen companion, willing the antidote to work and for her beloved mabari to get back up and walk again, forgetting about where her knife even came from in the first place.

"Oh no, no thanks necessary for saving your life, Champion." That familiar accent lilted across the clearing as its deliverer stepped into the open and angled towards her.

* Be strong, my heart

Author's Note

Who could it be? Pft, as if you can't figure it out. :P

I am a slave to my inspiration, as this just keeps getting longer...