I won't lie, this chapter made me feel worse than when I shot Alistair in the gut...

Those Spiky Little Things

It was strange, how even in a city so suddenly wrought with chaos and death, there was a calm and quiet in the wake of Alma's declaration.

"The…the first." Talia stared at the creature held captive by the old woman, not really entirely sure what it was, or what it was the first of; "First of what?"

"Of the smart Darkspawn." Alma shrugged, shifting her grasp on the beast; "The little shit's not exactly the brightest, but he's smarter than most of them."

"Not a tall bar." Cíada muttered, wiping caked blood from her boots onto one of the bodies; "Looks different than most of 'em."

"Oh, trust me, this one's about to take the cake." The old crone grinned, the leather of her inner gauntlets creaking as she tightened her grip; "Aren't you, Mommy's boy?"

"I am not the Mother's!"

Talia was somewhat sure she'd gone insane, at least partially. She had been keeping up on her blood intake, so damned if she knew how, but she had to have gone insane, considering she could have sworn the Darkspawn just talked. A glance about betrayed a similar reaction in the elf, eyes as wide as saucers.

"What."

"I am not the Mother's!" the beast repeated, and she almost dared to hope it had somehow just learned to repeat some random sentence, until it continued; "It is I who is betrayed! Bereft, I am who is cast aside. Vengeance, it will be mine. It would be mine, before this creature of old blood interfered!"

"You know..." Alma muttered, and Talia could hear bones breaking in the Darkspawn's arm; "It's not nice to comment on someone's age. Especially not a lady's age."

The Darkspawn - the First - somehow had the ability to look confused at that, even as a bit of bone was starting to poke the putrid skin of his wrist.

"So...what's this... thing then?" Cíada asked, and good thing too, for Talia was not really sure what to ask, or how the fuck to even go about it in the face of a talking Darkspawn. Had Morrigan still been around she might have glanced about for the witch's spells of voice-projection, and yet, there was no Morrigan.

But the old woman held her tongue, until the streets started filling with soldiers from the other quarters, and Talia saw Aedan making his way across the body-strewn cobblestones. His clothes were blackened with blood, and she didn't need to guess hard to know it was from Darkspawn, though at least there seemed to be no injuries beyond his sweat-mattered hair.

Ser Ava was easily enough recognizable, trailing after him as she made it a cause to break the skulls of every frozen Darkspawn she came past, as did the other Templar with him, the man who by process of elimination had to be Boris.

It was almost funny how she immediately recognized him, too.

"Goddamn fucking figures..." the man growled and pulled his mace from the shattered cranium of a frozen Hurlock. Apparently the frost only went in so deep, and liquefied brain seeped out of the cracks, along with the black puss and ichors she'd almost grown familiar with; "What the hells even happened?"

"Ser Ava, Ser Boris." Cíada turned to greet them, even as she offered Aedan a deep nod, one he returned before turning his own attention to his wife, and then the old woman in armor at the centre of all the chaos; "You're both well?"

"Well enough, yes." Ser Ava sighed, keeping her pace up until she and Boris stood amongst them, eyes on the sole Darkspawn still drawing breath. Eyes that quickly shifted to Talia, something like understanding in that gaze; "...far be it from me to presume, but at this point I'll risk guessing you did something beyond my understanding again, Warden Aulus?"

"Oi, I didn't do this." Talia defended herself, though she wasn't entirely sure why. It's not like it'd be a bad thing to be able to simply wipe out a few hundred Darkspawn with a snap of...no, wait, not a snap of her fingers. Alma had shouted something, hadn't she? Hakkon? What exactly just happened?

"The Thu'um, Kiir." The old lizard snorted in the back of her mind, like it was whispering just below her ears; "You should know this yourself now, your blood grants you such. She is like you, more so than you think."

"I can also hear you both, by the way." A new voice interrupted, forcing Talia to look up. Alma was staring right at her, a bored expression on what little of her face she could actually see; "You're lucky Hakkon's just got us, or it'd be a real mess in here."

The thought of a hundred voices within her mind was a horror in its own right.

"Well, this should be enough people that I don't have to repeat myself." Alma sighed, and threw the Darkspawn to the ground, planting a steel-clad boot on its chest. Talia doubted it could have escaped even if she hadn't, considering the odd angles she'd bent its arms and legs in. Some breaths were sucked in, others merely remained quiet in the face of the newcomer and the strange-looking Darkspawn; "Alright, if you'll all just shut up for a second, we'll have this over with."

Amusingly, almost, it seemed to take her a moment to realize that she'd not even needed to tell them the last part. Even Brelyna, now arrived and ragged of breath, did not say a word, though it seemed she was more perturbed at the sight of Alma, than the cursing Darkspawn she was using as a foot-stool.

Strangely, the beast's attention seemed to shift from the mage keeping it pinned to the ground, and instead settled on the Dunmer, beady eyes brimming with malice.

"Ashen thief! Ashen thi-!"

"So, you're probably wondering how it is that the Darkspawn got smart enough to dig under the walls, when there's no Archdemon leading them, yeah?" the old woman asked, voice loud enough that none could claim not to hear her. She poked the First with the butt of her glaive, bringing back its eyes onto her; "There's a lot of fuckery going on in the Arling, most of it sponsored by a mad scientist calling itself the 'Architect', and a crazed bitch he released on you called the 'Mother'."

If she'd expected outcries, Alma was disappointed, for no one really seemed like they knew what the hell to say. Talia just watched, and tried wrapping her mind around the still-impossible notion of intelligent Darkspawn. Or, rather it was Darkspawn with sentience, rather than sheer animal cunning.

"Betrayer! She sent me to that marsh! She-"

There was, however, some mild flinching when she stomped down on the Darkspawn's throat, outright decapitating the creature with brute force.

"Now, short version, 'cause I really gotta get back to dealing with the Orlesians." She withdrew her boot and wiped it a little on the body's chest; "The Mother's a crazed Broodmother given back her mind, and then promptly went and fucking lost it when she realized two tits had become eight. She's the one directing the Darkspawn, even though this guy thought he was...funny how that stuff works, isn't it?"

"...and that Architect?" Aedan was the one to ask, his expression betraying an inner conflict at this reunion.

"It's up in the air, kinda" Alma shrugged; "Pretty sure he is a Darkspawn though, and that he more or less deliberately kicked off the Blight. Tall, lean, dark...mysterious, all those things girls seem to adore these days." The grin on her face was not a comforting one; "So I figured, least you lot can do is go and take care of the source of the Darkspawn, while I go turn Gaspard's standing forces into forces that are lying down very still."

"Pardon that I ask, but...who are you addressing, exactly?" Ser Ava did not step forward, but Ser Boris did take half a step back, so it almost looked as if she had; "The Templars are too few in numbers to deal with a full-scale Darkspawn incursion, especially if they are as intelligent as this one."

"I was kinda banking on the Grey Wardens doing it, but all things considered there's just...what, five of them in Ferelden?"

"Four." Talia corrected her; "And Jowan isn't really in any shape to fight, so three at best, but we've no idea where Daveth or Sten are, so..." she spread her arms in something like resignation, because goddammit she hated the notion of having to be a Warden again; "So...it's really just us, then."

It reminded her of all the reasons the job sucked, chief among them being that Aedan was going to succumb to the Taint if she couldn't find a cure for the damn thing. At least it was promising if Brelyna's Cure Disease actually had some preventive effects. If it could even cure those already tainted, it was definitely a step in the right direction.

It just seemed too simple to be true, considering the taint was considering incurable, that a mere potion used against colds and fevers back home could be the thing to do the whole miserable affair in, once and for all. That, or she really would have to give him Dragon blood, which raised all the worst kinds of risks. At best, it would make him something called a 'Reaver', which she didn't like at all considering the addictions to dragon blood it apparently caused.

"About that, actually." Alma cleared her throat; "Apparently a letter came for Jowan in Vigil's Keep... You've made him something of a secretary, have you?"

"Poor bastard..." Cíada muttered.

"He kind of did that himself, I think." Talia argued; "A letter?"

"Yeah, that Qunari friend of yours hasn't been sitting on his ass, much as I could definitely see him as the sort to just sit and brood." The old crone chuckled, a weird sound coming through the narrow visor; "He's found a few recruits for the Wardens, and put them through the Joining, all on his own, the big boy."

"...he...Sten did?"

"Aww, he's taking responsibility." Brelyna cooed, which would have been a little unsettling in the current environment, if Talia hadn't spent the last nearly four years around her. Others, however, seemed less than enthusiastic; "...wonder if he's still running around half-naked. We did more or less leave him behind in Redcliffe."

"...honestly I kinda though he'd picked up sticks and returned to where he came from." Aedan said.

"Yeah, me too..." Talia admitted, shaking her head before returning her attention to Alma; "So...how many Wardens are there now?"

"Four."

"Wait, that..." Brelyna paused, her smile wilting; "That means just one made it through?"

"Yeah...apparently one died when he...you know, Joined, and another chickened out, so Sten shanked him..." Alma hummed, and Talia worried because yeah, she could totally see Sten being the kind of...well, not man, but person to do that. Brute force was sort of his thing; "But hey, at least the one who did make it through is apparently a pretty good one, so...yay? Anyway, they're headed for Vigil's Keep because of all the Darkspawn fuckery that's been going on and... I've done what I came for. If you're up for it, find the Mother in that old graveyard for the dragons. It's somewhere along the Highway."

"And...you're going where?" Aedan asked.

"Hmm, 'bout now Gaspard's probably crossed the Dane, so I'm going to use my overwhelming charisma to convince him to go home." The sweet smile on her face was made no less unsettling as she continued; "Failing that, I'll break every bone in his body, kill half his army and have the remaining half haul him home on a cart."

It had stopped raining.

Arrows, that was, not water. It was still pouring from the skies, and Khaok was at this point starting to argue with himself what he fucking hated more, Ferelden's weather or its neighbors. The Orlesians seemed to have expended their stocks of arrows and bolts, and now instead held the first line they'd established, while another, larger force marched forward behind them.

They'd bloodied the Orlesian's noses, certainly. The ground was dotted with the bodies of those slain by the Legion's archers. Far greater numbers were their dead than those of his own forces, something the Orc found some solace in, even as the line of bodies behind the trenches had grown. It was always a bother to lose men, but harder still when you were not defending Imperial soil, but rather the homelands of others.

"How many d'you think there are of them..." he muttered, addressing one of his seconds. The other Orc grunted, picking at his fangs whilst shielding his eyes from the rain with a raised hand.

"Infantry? Several thousand, easily. Most of them seem to be mostly brigandines or gambesons, not much steel plate far's I can see." Khaok frowned at those numbers, but knew that if the lines did not break, and they were not flanked, the Legion could hold against far greater still; "Problem's the cavalry. They're keepin' behind the ridge and I can't tell if it's the same ones riding around or new ones. Either way, there's a lot of the fuckers."

"Mmm." The Legate snorted and spat on the ground. He'd refrained from doing so around General Cauthrien, but here it felt appropriate; "They're probably going to try and break up the pikes enough to push their cavalry through, and focus their infantry on the trenches. Put halberds in the second line of the phalanx, and have the engineers pre-sight the trenches. One for each."

Tribunes were useful, like that. He'd heard the one up in the Anderfels got promoted to Legate, which was great for him, he supposed. Right now, it allowed Khaok to focus on the overall situation, and do his best t prepare for the Orlesian footmen who were, even now, coming into range of his archers.

And his archers had not yet depleted their stores of ammunition, as made evident by the Hastatis running to and from the ridges with bundles of arrows under each arm. The camp was more than well supplied, and now he was digging into those supplies, for if not now, when?

It was, however, an annoyance to watch the Orlesians advancing under cover of their shields, so very similar to how Legionaries would have done it. Arrows soon enough covered their advance like the pricks on a porcupine, but only occasionally did one slip up and let his shield waver for long enough that an arrow would go through, and a body be left behind.

When he felt them close enough for misses to be unlikely, Khaok signaled the artillery with a wave of his hand. The first bolts flew before he'd let his arm drop again, punching through the front of the advancing shield wall. It almost seemed to break the advance then and there, but even that hole was patched, and now they were moving faster, having no doubt realized how little use their shields were. One or two bolts hit their shields at odd angles, glancing off like a skipped stone on still waters.

He could always hope they'd hit something further down the line.

With the enemy out of arrows, Khaok felt he could afford some degree of exposure, and thus stood amongst his own archers, taking in the scene.

They were closer now, the Orlesian infantry. A line as wide as their entire perimeter, and with ranks deep enough that he couldn't quite count them. They were quite finite, at least, in that he could see where their ranks ended, and thus perform crude calculations that landed the opposition in at least Legion strength. Dismaying numbers, yeah, but at the same time they would be worn from their pincer march, and his own forces were well enough entrenched. He could see their cavalry now, too, advancing on the flanks of their infantry, men encased wholly in plates of steel, on mounts equally so armored.

That spelled trouble, provided they were allowed to reach their lines. If he could rob them of the initiative, it'd be that much more likely that they'd simply charge, heedlessly and heedless of traps. It was not a smile that formed on his lips, but he was satisfied with himself all the same.

"Artillery, shift targets to their heavy cavalry!"

Charles was having a harder time than he'd like, keeping Chevauché steady and at a slow trot.

Up ahead, the foreigner's lines were now wholly apparent, just as it was that where their own skirmishers had run out of arrows to the point of depleting even those scavenged from the dead, their foe was rather more well stocked. He couldn't see if it had broken the enemy pike wall. Even now, hours after the skirmishes had started, they still retained arrows to rain over the forward infantry.

And though the arrows themselves had little chance at harming neither himself nor his mount, there was another cause for his unrest, one that made itself apparent with a few seconds of interval, at a pace so regular it felt more as if he was advancing towards a stamping mill, rather than an army.

The infantry advanced behind the cover of their shields, itself enough protection against arrows, but offered little but concealment for the individual against the bolt-throwers of the enemy. With shorter intervals than unstrained breathing, a fresh bolt would puncture the front of the advancing ranks, the brutality and power of the bolts betrayed by the bodies left behind as the men advanced.

He admired their bravery, even as he hoped they would remain the targets of the enemy artillery.

There was shouting from the enemy lines, not that such was a change. Whomever was in command possessed lungs of brass, no doubt. For a moment, the bolts stopped raining upon the commoners, and Charles allowed himself a breath of relief, that if nothing else at least they'd run out of those infernal bolts.

Then the first Chevalier was plucked from his mount, torn straight from the saddle as a bolt no longer than his sword punched through and struck in his breastplate, leaving the horse to trot around where it'd lost contact with its rider. There was barely even a scream, at least not from the man himself, though the Chevalier behind him received a body with enough force that it might as well have been the bolt itself striking his horse.

Charles nearly stopped Chevauché as well, and it wouldn't even have been a conscious decision on his part, such was the shock. Of course, it was to be expected that they as well would become targets, but to see a Chevalier in the finest plate known to man, simply torn away like a gnat from a horse's skin, it instilled a sense of fright in him he would not ever confess to. It only got worse as the bolts started flying about like angered birds, picking men from their horses, or simply the horses from underneath them, giving scant regards to the armor and plate they punctured.

"Horn bearers, sound the charge! Prepare to charge!" Duke Bernard shouted ahead of the formation, unfazed in posture at least as metal whizzed about him; "CHARGE!"

There was a strange...not elegance, but at the same time yes, just so, about the way in which the horns echoed over the army. Near eight thousand men set into motion, a rippling effect as those in the front took off into a jog, and those behind followed as soon as space was for it. Thousands of throats echoed the same warcry as they tore towards the foe, a wall of pikes and shields and stakes, and Charles could feel as fear gave way to adrenaline, and then to courage and righteous fury.

"CHARGE!" his own throat echoed the cry as he kicked Chevauché into a faster and faster trot, following the men at his sides until it was a full canter, just shy of outright galloping at the foe. His right arm couched his lance, and his left maintained its grip on his shield, trusting in the quality and deepness of his saddle to keep him seated through the charge; "CHARGE! CHARGE!"

In no time at all had the Chevaliers surpassed the infantry, and now Charles could see himself aimed at the center gap in the trenches, the one where most of the arrows had fallen. It did not mean the phalanx awaiting him looked in any way to be broken or wavering, but he put enough trust in the quality of his own and Chevauché's armor that he drove on all the same, the thundering of hooves and the thundering of his heart deafening out all else. He was not even in the front of the wedge they'd formed, but in the middle of it and so couldn't even have veered off had he wanted to. No, this was where his name would be forged, where he would strive for such deeds that the Emperor himself would come to hear of him. Just you wait, Phillipe, I'll have tales of my own valor once we meet again!

Charging a wall of pikes was always what peasants called 'a game of chicken'. The horse, no matter how well armored and trained, would not drive itself into a spiked death, and so it was always up to whether the nerves of the defenders would hold in the face of a thundering cavalry charge.

None, however, had ever stood up to the full might of the Emperor's Chevaliers once charging in full force.

No one really seemed to notice them in time, the little things in the dirt.

Barely the size of a clenched fist, and wrought of iron with four points, Charles didn't even see the caltrops covering the ground like weeds until suddenly horses screamed and fell around him, and Chevauché as well reared back and fell onto his side. The world spun, and brief glimpses of horrible black needles that stuck from his mount's hooves was all Charles could see before they crashed to the ground.

It was instincts more than anything that saved him from a crushed leg, and Charles rolled out of the way even as more and more of his comrades came charging in, their momentums far too great to halt in the face of the sudden, horrifying chaos.

The world was a mess, a hellish chaos of noisy and tremors as men and mounts collided with each other in desperate attempts to avoid the crash, and the shouts and screams of those who'd fallen, some crushed underneath their horses and others struck with simple terror. Charles scrambled to get back to Chevauché, already having trouble finding his friend amongst the screaming animals and men. Only the blazon, his family's coat of arms marked on the armor allowed him to find his horse, even as arrows and bolts fell around him in a rain of death that, where it before had seemed harmless, now felt as if he wore no armor at all, and that even a single one could fell him.

The charge...he didn't even know if the charge had failed or if it was just their path that had been strewn with these infernal contraptions. Chevauché wasn't even kicking or screaming, simply lying there with his eyes wide and ears moving in every which way, frothing at the mouth whilst three of his legs stabbed at the skies as best they could.

Only one hoof had actually been spared the cruelty of these heathen dogs, though Charles barely even sensed such a blessing in the face of the anguish of his horse. Chevauché's ears stilled when he came close enough, and he willed himself not to let the tears flow as he saw the state of his beloved horse. The leg that had been spared the caltrops was instead bent at an odd enough angle that he knew it to be broken, and blood poured down the other three.

Charles heaved for air, panic and dread mounting within him, not for himself. He felt like hurling, but clenched his teeth and willed it down. If he could...if he could just...those spikes, if he could get them out, then...He had to. If he could just get them out. This wasn't how it was supposed...Not like this! Not in this manner, oh Maker and Andraste, not like this!

There was little mercy to be had from either, it seemed. The ground he knelt upon was already reddening, and it was just a glance at Chevauché's belly to know why, and to see so many of those cruel iron spikes protruding from his steed's body. Charles hurled right then and there, anguish and terror both welling up beyond his control.

The steed he had hand-raised since it was a foal died there in his trembling, bile covered hands, eyes wide with fear until they finally glazed over, and the red foam dried upon its lips. There was nothing he could do, but weep, head pressed against the still-warm flank of its neck.

There was nothing he could do.

Legate Khaok was somewhat torn on a certain matter.

On one hand, he could as well have burst out in laughter at the sight of how easily the Orlesian infantry lost their courage and their guts when the cavalry charge failed. They seemed to have fully expected their vaunted Chevaliers to carry the battle for them. Yet now thanks to the caltrops they found themselves near-alone in the battle, with Imperial pikes and swords awaiting them, and a stream of crossbow bolts that did not cease until they came so close to the trenches that the archers might have hit their own men. If they actually made it to the Legionaries, pikes and halberds awaited them.

The ones who'd attempted to storm them via the Highway, and those of them who made it across the caltrops and the bodies of the Chevaliers and their mounts, were met with the Malakathii, heavily armed and armored units of Orcish warhammer-wielding warriors who crushed the staggered foes with scant notions of mercy.

A cuirass of steel was little defense against a warhammer swung with the force to break the bones of a mammoth.

Those who attempted storming the staked trenches, of course, were not given such mercies, and were felled in droves until they finally relented, unable to break through the makeshift palisades without lowering their shields, thus making them all the easier to strike down.

On the other hand, much as he took his own, Orcish delight in the crushing of enemy soldiers, service in the Legion had also instilled within him a certain sense of empathy. Some might call it a sense of humanity, but being decidedly not human, that wouldn't really work with him. When he saw the attackers withdrawing, he also saw those left behind before his own trenches, and within them. Wounded and maimed, some crawled in the mud to escape the Legion, whilst others flailed weakly in the muck, clutching where arrows or bolts had struck them, or a halberd had crushed bone.

Where the Chevaliers had ridden onto the caltrops, those who'd survived the chaos, yet failed to escape, now crawled around, climbing across their dead or dying horses. The weeping was the worst part, really, and a sound he wasn't used to on a battlefield. Cries of pain, definitely, those were as wont to him as the horns of war, but the cries of grief was a rare enough thing that he wasn't sure how to handle it.

But it made a knot form in his guts, all the same, the reminded that he wasn't merely killing enemy soldiers.

"...give the order to cease fire." He barely even mustered the will to grumble it to the tribune, receiving in kind only a silent salute; "And tell those Orlesians they can come get their dead. They'll stink up my trenches otherwise..."

"And the wounded ones?"

Khaok stared at the wounded and the dying, at grown men clutching arrows and Chevaliers who wept over their horses. Orcs were not terribly expressive, he knew that saying, but all the same he couldn't help the sigh.

"They can take their commoners too, the wounded ones. We'll take the Chevaliers hostage, get them healed up. The General said hostage-taking's a normal thing around here." His eyes stuck on one of the Chevaliers, pressing his head against the neck of his dead horse. Poor creature, really, belly full of caltrops from the fall. This was why Orcs didn't do cavalry, they'd too much respect for beasts to get them mixed up in their wars; "...might as well follow local customs."