Sweat, pain, the screech of metal, the tearing of flesh, bright red blood and voices…shouts, cries, screams in the darkness.

Asleena's roar was without words, a noise born of pure defiance. She vented her wrath in the broodmother's very face as it whipped her nearer its vast bulk, the tentacle gripping her once again trying, and failing, to clench and crush her dragonbone cuirass. As she had the last time, and the time before that, the Grey Warden waited until she was as close as she could bear before lashing out with her small blade, stabbing towards eyes and mouth and throat. The broodmother howled and recoiled, thrusting her away but not dropping her.

The monstrous creature was every bit as corpulent and disgusting as the one she'd seen in the Deep Roads, and there was nothing at all to even suggest it had once been an elf, let alone a Keeper of the Dalish. Mindless except for hunger and rage and the taint that drove its will to breed and reproduce for the darkspawn masses, it was a thing to drive terror into even the staunchest heart—particularly the heart of a woman. A small mercy that Asleena was a Grey Warden and immune to the same fate…she had no need to worry about becoming a hurlock breeding ground, only about being torn apart and eaten to sustain the insatiable appetite of an abomination that could give birth to entire litters of sharlocks at a time.

Its face, upper chest and swollen arms were already a mass of cuts and gashes where previous dagger-thrusts had landed; entire slabs of meat had been cut away in places, exposing muscle or bone. While not difficult to strike due to its sheer size, it was incredibly hard to deliver a killing blow. Where the heart beat beneath the noisome rolls of bloated flesh was impossible to tell, nor would Asleena's weapon have been long enough to reach it in any case. The thick neck and the head, the brain, were her only chances for a swift victory, and for that she relied upon the broodmother keeping her aloft. The tentacle grasping her she could not hack at, regardless of her soul-deep desires to the contrary. Not only would that drop her to ground level, it would land her on her bad leg, and Maker only knew if she'd be able to keep going after that shocked her system.

Her mind, everything in her that wanted to survive and kill this tainted atrocity, had been kicked into high speed. Past battles and experience leapt unerringly to the fore with a clarity that only truly shone through in the most desperate of conflicts, and she let that knowledge consume her every thought, hold back the physical agony that sapped her strength, fend off black despair, shield against panic. In other struggles, back during the Blight, her companions would have rallied around her when she was like this, drawn to her side as though she were some kind of oasis amidst a storm of battle-madness.

But she was alone here.

Other tentacles battered at her head and shield when she was held at a distance. Too bulky to grasp her dagger, the shield was large enough for the tip of a tentacle to wind around and attempt to rip it from her arm, but that she could stab at, and she did so without mercy, covering herself with gobbets of gore and tainted blood before the abused limb pulled away.

The broodmother held her at a safe distance then, ceasing its onslaught and simply leering at her. Something seemed to be going on behind those taint-maddened eyes.

Asleena used the brief respite to wipe blood from her eyes, then readied herself once more. "What are you waiting for?" she grated. "Come on!"

There was a hideous bubbling sound, a mockery of laughter, then the tentacle moved. Asleena saw a brief blur of flesh and rock as she was wrenched around, then the pressure around her midsection was gone and she was hurtling straight for a jagged stone wall at breakneck speed.

It should have killed her.

The Lifeward flared…

…and winked out.

The network of green lines shattered, counteracting the harsh jolt of killing pain that tore through Zevran's body. Impact with solid rock should have smashed his skull and broken half the bones in his body. He almost cried out, but Crow training took control, keeping him almost completely silent even though his mind had been convinced Death finally whispered his name and curled possessive fingers around his heart.

He shook phantom voices from his head and tried to roll onto his side, biting back a groan of agony. The spell might have saved his life, but it had not made him impervious to harm. He was bleeding, most of it from his ears and nose he realised, badly bruised, and would not have been at all surprised had a chirurgeon told him several internal organs had just been pulped.

Retaining enough presence of mind to tug at the rope bound to his arm and guide Sindel to his location, he lay still and quiet and looked around for immediate threats. He could not have landed far away from—

Asleena's voice split the night, very close, savage and in terrible pain. Zevran was on his feet without a second thought, though his head spun as soon as he stood. He staggered sideways and bruised his knuckles when he thrust out a hand to brace himself against a rocky outcropping, misjudging the distance. Gripping the rope again he tugged more urgently, and there was a beating of wings as the hawk descended then changed form before touching ground.

Sindel gave the assassin a single glance through the gloom then touched his shoulder and whispered something. A blue glow suffused her hand and regenerative energies surged through Zevran's body.

"Give it a moment," she breathed, bringing her staff to hand. "I saw from above. There is light and a monster. That way."

Zevran did not heed the part about waiting, setting off quickly in the direction indicated as he shouldered his pack and drew his blades. When his left foot pressed down on something that was not solid he jerked back and canted his sword to strike, but it was no darkspawn lying in wait or even a body. More a puddle or mound of…something…He ignored it and Sindel's sharp intake of breath both, pressing ahead with greater speed as the noise of something ahead became more distinct.

The passage widened into a cavernous expanse, the floor awash with offal and afterbirth, dominated by a creature that no explanation of Leliana's could have sufficiently described. When the bard had returned from the Deep Roads with Oghren, Alistair and Asleena, her usual flair for words had failed her upon reaching the part about the broodmother. None of the party that had faced the thing had wanted to fully explain it, though Oghren had gotten drunk enough at one point to say 'breasts', 'tentacles' and 'Branka was sodding crazy' by way of explanation, which Zevran had found amusing at the time.

He felt no inclination to laugh now.

The grotesque thing was reared back, its laughing attention fixed upon a lone human woman held within the grip of two tentacles. One of these encircled Asleena's breastplate while the other gripped both of her legs in a maliciously gentle coil. The Grey Warden's spine was arched, eyes wide and rolled back, lips parted in a soundless scream. The broodmother might not have even been trying to wrench the limbs from her body; just pressing upon a broken bone with enough force could render anyone completely helpless.

She had no weapon in her right hand, Zevran noted quickly, but Duncan's shield was strapped to her left. She was covered in blood, but so too was the broodmother's face and neck. She'd put up a fight.

"Take my sword," he said, reversing it to offer the hilt to Sindel, who transferred her horrified gaze from the broodmother to him. "If that thing drops Asleena, get to her side and put this in her hands."

"What will you do?" she hissed.

"Take the sword!" he snapped, and she obeyed. "Can you heal her?"

"I can't repair her leg! I can do what I can, but—"

"Then do what you can." He pulled out a second dagger, the twin of the first, another of the Thorns of the Dead Gods. "Stay hidden while I get its attention."

She drew a breath, nodded and crouched down beside the rocky wall. "Mythral protect you, Andruil guide your blades."

Zevran stepped lightly into the cavern and circled, avoiding the flesh-piled ground where he could, wary eyes alert. He wanted to move swiftly to spare Asleena further torment, but haste would see him snared if he acted too soon. When he was positioned directly in front of the broodmother's bloated chest he gathered himself, flipped both daggers so that the blades pointed down, then sprinted across the floor and jumped, driving his weapons into the blubberous mass he launched himself upon. Without pause, barely heeding the surprised roar from above, the assassin pulled one blade free and drove it higher, then the other, again and again like a climber with rock-spikes might scale a troublesome cliff…

The pain receded. Her right leg still screamed agony, but it was nothing compared to the debilitating torture that had paralysed her moments ago. Healing energy seared through her body, as warm and welcome as sunlight, and for a couple of blissful seconds she lost herself completely in the sensation.

"Asleena!" a familiar Antivan voice roared.

Her head came up and she gasped suddenly at the distance between herself and the ground. The broodmother was still holding her aloft but its attention had been diverted from her for the moment, its other tentacles smacking down repeatedly at the head and back of a blond elf who was making a spirited attempt to hack its neck open with his daggers.

Zevran?

And…is that Sindel on the ground?

How the…?

The tentacle gripping her moved and she grabbed at it instinctively, heart leaping into her throat. She did not want to get thrown against a wall again, but the broodmother had other ideas. Instead of hurling her across the cavern, it drove her towards Zevran, coming in from the side to sweep him away.

"Look out!" she yelled and he heard just in time to avoid being hit. He released one dagger from the bloody furrow in the broodmother's throat and dropped down lower, but maintained his hold on the blade buried in its collarbone. Then, with his free hand, he reached out and grabbed at Asleena's as she hurtled past. Their fingers locked and the connection skewed the tentacle's path. Momentum swung Asleena around, right up close to the broodmother's bloodied neck, and battle-sense took over without her heart even skipping a beat. The flat edge of Duncan's silverite shield lifted and plunged into the open wound, driven deep by the broodmother's own strength, to the telling sound of tearing gristle.

Zevran's grip tightened as the tentacle holding her stiffened and yanked in an automatic reflex that would have dashed her against the floor. His face tightened with strain but he did not let go…then a terrible shudder ran through the broodmother's bulk and it listed to one side, the tentacles falling away to coil upon the floor.

Asleena, half-lying across the monster's shoulder with her shield and left arm buried three quarters of the way through its neck, paused a moment to catch her breath and come to terms with the fact that she was somehow alive, then grinned down at Zevran with unabashed relief.

The assassin squeezed her hand and grinned back. "Royally tough to kill," he said quietly.