Thirty-six
Vell wasn't sure if her feet were even touching the ground.
Adamant moved around her in a streak, drab colored lines blurring around the edges of her vision as she flew toward the back tower and the Inquisition soldiers under siege by the demons. Each stride of her legs seemed to send her floating, flying, as the tore across the yard.
The Veil carried her, each step propelled by the current of the ever-moving curtain. She lodged herself inside of the waves, letting them curl around and carry her body.
Her entire body felt almost weightless, as if she were caught somewhere in the in between. The subtle pressure of her foot touching the ground reminded her that she was still part of the physical world. But the flight, the blurring of the world and the speed at which she moved all suggested that she was moving outside of the corporeal plane and its laws.
She could feel the sweat flying off of her body with each changing of her legs and every pump of her arms. The air in her lungs felt so hot it was as if she was inhaling and exhaling fire. She felt like she was burning from the inside out, her vision locked onto the tower and the shadows of demons that moved toward it.
Maybe she was on fire. Every time her arms came up in what felt like half speed compared to the way the fortress moved around her, she could see the flicker of green flame around her body.
Her rage was boiling out of her. She couldn't take it, the way the Templar had wanted to help and the way Taesas had talked him down, convinced him to do nothing even though he could have done something. It was apparent from the ground that every one of the soldiers in the tower was going to die if no one did anything.
Taesas was content to let them die because they weren't his responsibility.
Her fingers had curled into a fist so tight that it made the muscles in her forearm seize until she was overcome with a sudden knot that shot a sharp pain up toward her elbow.
She was up the stairs in what felt like two bounds and running along the wall. The Inquisiton soldiers rushing from their tower seemed to barely be moving at all. The Inquisition soldiers at the north tower were nearly as motionless, ducked behind their shields and bracing against the onslaught of the demons. The demons themselves crept, their long, wicked claws seemingly howling as they moved through the air.
Her field of vision was draped in green fire as she leapt over the dead bodies of Wardens and Inquisition men littered across the ramparts. The tower grew larger and larger before her, the soldiers and demons clearer and clearer, and everything moving slower and slower.
There was no doubt now, she realized, that she was tucked somewhere inside of the Veil itself. She could feel it surrounding her now, stronger and more present that she ever felt it with Thelric during her meditations. Was this how her mentor felt the Veil? Did she feel it this strongly, this vividly?
Vell drew back her right arm even as her feet still hovered about the ground, twisting her entire body around as she neared the battlefield, eyeing the large, black, jagged shade with its arms up over its head ready to strike down at a soldier whose shield had fallen away from her body.
She jumped, aiming her fist downward as she whistled through the air.
Vell struck the ground in an explosion of green fire.
Her magic connected with the shade, the impact slamming it down and back so hard that it crashed through the old, hardened stones of Adamant. The demon splattered into nothingness as the force broke the top of the wall away, sending stones tumbling into the infinite, tainted cleft below.
The girl with the curly brown hair fell backward onto her rear and recoiled on her hands at Vell's sudden appearance. Vell glanced down, catching the girl's stunned face through the updraft of green flame that wicked off of her body and dissipated in the air above her.
To Vell's left, the few remaining soldiers huddled close behind, many bloodied and battered. To her right, the ramparts were choked with bodies, some still writhing as the lesser demons raked their claws through armor and flesh. She watched as the closer of the hulking pride demons lifted its massive foot and stomped it down, crushing a barely-alive soldier beneath it.
The demon cocked its head back and laughed a deep, dreadful laugh at the kill.
"What… where did you come from?" the Templar girl said.
Her curled brown hair was spattered with blood and gore. Her face was white and saggy with dread, replacing the girlish infatuation she had buzzed around Tae with. Her armor and shield were scratched deeply and her sword was stained black with demon's blood.
Vell threw her right arm up, bringing the Veil across her body as a shield to knock aside the long, buzzing electric whip of the closer of the two pride demons. Two shades charged ahead and Vell twisted on her left foot, rotating her body around as they neared, bringing the Veil behind her right leg as she swept a kick that snapped both of the demons up into the air, over the wall and into the abyss, screeching as they fell into the darkness.
Vell placed her foot back down and glanced back at the Templar girl again.
She was so young. Younger than Vell even.
Taesas was going to let her die.
Her father. Her father was going to let her die too.
Her father was going to let her die because of some notion of following fucking orders.
No one was going to save her. No one was going to save any of them. All of the survivors, every last one of them was some human wretch and the godly men were going to let them all be slaughtered by demons.
Tae would run to the rendezvous point and say that he did his part, he completed his orders and that his men had lived through the assault. And if anyone asked him about the dozens of bodies lying on the walls just to the north of his position, he would casually shrug his shoulder and claim that they were not his responsibility.
These soldiers were not just blades and shields. They were not just faceless lumps of meat to be told where to go and what to do and when to die. They were people. They were living, breathing things. No matter how they came here, they were not expendable.
No one was disposable.
She wasn't disposable.
She was thrown into the Circle young and poor and scared and elven. That was the label they had put on her the second she was inside their walls and it was how they had always treated her. She was teased and scolded and berated every day by the apprentices and the Templars and the Enchanters.
None of them had cared whether she lived or died. None of them bothered to take notice when she would disappear for days at a time. None of them ever cared what happened to her when the Templar would drag her into the dungeons and torture her to gather the blood he wanted and to satisfy his depraved fetish.
No one had ever cared.
No one had ever cared until Angelo.
And when he tried to do something about it, they took everything away from him for it.
It wasn't right. The world wasn't supposed to this cold and cruel. It wasn't right. People weren't supposed to be used and discarded if or when they were no longer useful, no matter how pathetic, unlucky or weak they might be. It wasn't right.
And she couldn't stand it any longer.
She fell between the currents of the Veil once more, her entire body moving in the slipstream as the world crawled around her. She moved around and through the demons between the soldiers and the pride demons that beset them.
Her magic boiled within her, oozing out of her pores and overflowing out of her in a hot torrent.
The pride demon's arm was still moving from the impact of her shield throwing its attack aside only a half second earlier when she materialized from the ether in front of it.
It never had time to react as she appeared a step before it, the ball of fire spinning in between her cupped palms at her right hip. The magic swelled fiercely, tongues of wild flame licking out from the edges of the ball of fire that grew hotter and hotter until the as the flames melted from red, to orange, to a dazzling sphere of white.
By the time the demon flinched at her presence, Vell thrust her arms up toward its horned head and let loose the inferno.
Tongues of flame splashed backward as the magic connected with the demon's body, but the power and heat of the spell consumed it, obliterating everything that stood before it into smoke and ash.
The magic burned past the demon that was no longer there, fire spilling dozens of feet into the night sky as the spell coursed out of Vell, fueled by the roiling turmoil bleeding out of her. As the fire consumed what was left of the demon and the scorched and detached legs of the monster tumbled backward onto the ramparts, she cut the spell and pulled her hands back.
She scanned the destruction before her. The incinerated remains of the demon. The red, glowing, superheated stones of the wall to her left. The smoke that filled her nose with the rancid smell of burnt flesh.
Vell shook her steaming fingers in front of her and took a breath, not feeling winded in the slightest despite the rage of a spell that she never could have conceived casting. The way she had immolated the despair demon in the forest was pitiful nothingness in comparison.
The shades she had blown past on her way to attack the bigger fish had stopped between her and the Inquisition soldiers. Could demons fear? Vell didn't know. But if they could fear, she was pretty sure the shades were pissing themselves. As they should be.
They were frozen, barely able to react at all as she charged them, dismembering them one by one as if she were tearing apart a straw dummy in the Inquisition's training yard with her bare hands. The Veil cut, smashed and crushed them as she threw the force of the Fade through them one at a time.
It all seemed so easy. She moved so much faster than them. She hit so much harder than them. She touched a power so great that they could do nothing but stand before it and be torn to pieces by it. She reaped destruction upon them with seemingly no effort, her arms and legs and soul moving with no weight at all as she whipped them around.
And the Veil, the Veil followed her every move, snapping like a wave crashing ashore and then fading back into the infinite motion of its ocean.
She thrust her first through the body of the last shade that stood before her. The wind caused by the force blew across the Inquisition soldiers standing in awe under the shadow of the tower. The curled ends of the Templar's hair dangling just above her wide shoulders bounced as if she were standing in a field among a slight, springtime breeze.
Vell withdrew her hand back to her side and took another breath. How many shades had she just killed? She glanced around at the bits of black stuff melting away into green embers as it floated up into the air about Adamant like ash. Everything happened so fast that it was all a blur in her head. Her entire body felt barely there, just embraced in a coursing, infinite energy.
"Look out!" the Templar girl shouted, too late.
Vell felt the crack of the electric chains across her back and the energy coursing through her body as the attack raked her.
As the whips withdrew, she could hear the deep guffawing of the other pride demon down the ramparts from her position.
Vell's entire body had crouched slightly, her knees bending a bit before locking into place and her back arching out slightly so she could drop her head. Her hands clenched instinctively into fists as her teeth locked together and her tongue pressed to the back of her mouth to block any vocalization of pain from coming up her throat.
She did not scream, or cry out, or even grunt at the familiar pain.
It had taken years to train herself not to scream as the Templar's lash tore across her bare back. She had learned to swallow the spiraling fear that gripped her every time she felt her legs give out beneath her, as she watched the crimson streaks roll around her sides and drip down her abdomen and along the slopes of her hip bones. She had forced her eyes not to flow with tears at every blinding crack of the whip, as her hands clenched so tightly to the chains that held her to the wall until the rough metal chafed and cut her palms.
She would close her eyes as tight as she could and hold her breath every time she heard the leather tails whistling through the air before the crack they would make against her flesh. It had taken willpower upon willpower upon willpower not to give in to the agony. Even as the Templar stood at her side, screaming at the top of his lungs into her ears to try to break her, to try to make her crack and cry out, she gritted her teeth and bore the pain until it overwhelmed her consciousness itself.
It had taken scar upon scar upon scar over years for her to overcome the torment. But in that victory, Vell had cemented to herself that she would never again submit.
She straightened, slowly, as her nostrils filled with the smell of scorched leather. She processed the familiar ache of pain across her back. She lifted her arms and spread them backward to stretch her shoulder blades and move them through the sting of the demon's lash.
She turned, staring down the demon.
It flexed its arms out, bellowing with another cocky guffaw as purple electric bent across its body. It stomped its massive right foot down, shaking the ground beneath her. She could hear the Inquisition soldiers behind her shuffle with unease.
"You're going to fucking regret that," she growled coldly to the demon as she lowered her chin slightly toward her chest.
The demon responded with another prideful laugh as it lifted its misshapen, clawed right arm. The sphere of electric began to crackle around it, expanding several feet wide and growing in intensity. The demon laughed one more booming laugh and fired the magic ahead at her.
Vell raised her left hand, reaching out into the Veil and quickly feeling the ball of magic soaring toward her. Within the barrier, she could feel the edges of the magic, sense its shape and feel its intensity twisting through the physical world.
She twisted the Veil around her upturned palm like a cushion, slowing the magic rapidly as it approached her until it came to a crawl and stop. The swirling ball of lightning, nearly as tall as she was, hovered just before her face spinning and crackling.
At first, she hadn't understood how Ghi had seemingly plucked her magic out of the air as it if were some type of balloon. She had been too weak at the time, too out of tune with the true nature of the Veil. As she trained it had become more and more clear. Every spell was merely a physical manifestation of the Fade, pulled across the barrier. Once she could feel that and once she could move the Veil to her will, it became so clear.
Ghi had never caught her spell upon his physical hand. All he had done was wrap the Veil around it and smother it from existence.
Vell closed her fingers, tightening the noose of the Veil around the ball of spark until it fizzled and vanished.
If a pride demon were capable of feeling fear, she wondered if that was the moment this one felt it. It raised its other arm, summoning the crackling whips again and snapped them toward her.
Vell lifted her right arm, shielding herself with the Veil as she let the lash coil around her forearm. The sizzling purple energy buzzed, but couldn't touch her. She smirked as the demon tried to tug it back, but her feet held, rooted, as she anchored herself with the Veil.
"I told you you would regret that," Vell said again.
She screamed as she jerked her arm back with the aid of the Veil, letting the memory of countless torture sessions in the dungeons of White Spire fuel her strength. The pride demon staggered ahead, off balance as the electric whips faded into nothing.
Vell stomped her left foot down again to set it and rolled her body to the left. As the demon stumbled toward her, she lifted her right leg once more, bringing the kick around with a lightning-fast snap and set it down in front of her.
She lifted her right hand, catching the chest of the pride demon as it tumbled down onto her. She held it, staring at its hateful, black eyes and the razor sharp teeth dangling above her rainbow head.
The demon's body began to disintegrate from the midsection, pieces smoldering away as the glowing green line bisecting its body became clearer and clearer. The demon roared, but was otherwise unable to move as the rift energy consumed it up and down, slowly burning it away into nothing more than ash and smoke until Vell's hand held onto nothing at all.
She exhaled and her body suddenly felt heavy as the burning energy inside of faded away as quickly as it had come on.
She turned around to the Inquisition soldiers, seeing the reinforcements from the ground now just arriving. At their lead was the older Templar, followed by Jac and Malcolm and another dozen foot soldiers. Taesas, of course, was not with them.
"Jolene! Jolene! You're all right!" the Templar shouted, throwing down his shield as he rushed forward and grabbed the young girl into his arms. She dropped her own weapons, lifting her arms to squeeze around the midriff of her father.
Malcolm staggered forward toward her, looking over her shoulder at the remains of the glowing ash blowing away on the wind, before glancing back down at her.
"What in the fuck was that?"
"Malcolm, give her a min-" Jac tried to interject.
"No, fuck that," he said excitedly, his face caught somewhere between amazement, arousal and horror as he shoved the Orlesian back. "She just fucking… she just… That was a fucking pride demon!"
Vell lifted her hands and looked at them. They felt so heavy now. Even if she tried to do that again, she was pretty sure she wouldn't even be able to come close. How had she done all that, she wondered now?
Now that she was on the other side of it, it all kind of a felt like an orgasm. In the moment, she had felt something incredible and seen stars. She wasn't exactly sure what she had said or what kind of involuntary spasms had come out of her body. Now, she just felt tingly, tired and somewhat confused.
"I… don't know what happened," she said, snapping her fingers and looking at the small wick of flame that appeared, before shaking her fingers and extinguishing it.
The Templar pushed between Malcolm and Jac. He looked at the destruction standing around them and then looked down at her. His head bounced up and down just barely as he curled his lip, his eyes a little wet.
"You saved my daughter," he said quietly.
Matteo took a step forward and extended his arms, wrapping them around Vell's back and squeezing her close to his chest.
"I can't ever thank you for this," he said.
Vell shifted awkwardly at being pressed against his steel breastplate. The flaming sword of Andraste was pushed right up against her cheek as his mailed fingers unknowingly pressed against the slight burns across her back.
And then it hit her.
A Templar was hugging her.
She lifted her hands, too, and hugged him back.