Does that person know they're running straight into danger?
...***...
Sloane signals to his mabari to follow after the others before he dips down enough to grab a hold of my hand and drag me through the dense vegetation after Amell and Aereweld with Liana at our backs. He runs so quickly that I stumble quite a few times until I swing myself around to his back and release his hand in favor of holding on to the collared edge of his worn leather armor. The soot coating everything and the ash hanging in the air thickens enough to make it difficult to breathe the further we run, or perhaps that's just from all the damned running itself. I wasn't in such a poor state before... before the last time I was in the world I used to call home, but the blood mage's treatment was unkind – it left me half-starved and weak without the blood magic coursing through my skin. Fighting darkspawn and bandits and everything else hasn't been too conductive to getting better, and I often feel I can't keep up with everyone else – when I'm just me and not the reaver the cultists made me out to be. The blood magic gives me a strength and stamina I wouldn't have otherwise. And I'm too cautious to rely on it right now.
I hear a guttural scream coming from the other side of a curtain of thick hanging vines, and I release Sloane with my heart in my throat and a barrage of terrible scenarios rampaging through my skull. I scurry past him in fear for whoever had screamed – it sounded male. Amell? Did that gangly mage get hurt? – and I push through the plant life to see someone being pinned down by one large clawed hand of a spirit corrupted by mortal pride. That person has a shock of silvery-white hair hanging in heavy, uneven dredlocks and skin a rosy-tinted bronze. That's Sten.
I'm not given more than a chance to take in Sten's struggling form before something cold lances against my side – cold enough to chill and blister the skin on my ribs and hip beneath my armor. I cry out in pain, the sound little more than a shocked exhale of breath drawn in pitch due to clawing fear, and I turn to find my panic matched in surprise as I gaze upon a heavily cloaked figure dusted in ice, clothes tattered and limbs too large and malformed for it to be human.
"So tired, so sad..." It drawls in an uneven voice, deep and raspy with an unnatural edge, "Full of shame, grief... Ah, grief. So fresh within you. Battered hope, yes, fear of failure. Despair at injustice. You mourn. You fight. You yearn for what you cannot attain. For what you have lost." It approaches without its feet touching the ground, one battered hand outstretched towards me allowing a hint of gleaming white, large canines beneath it's cloaked hood to show at the movement. I'm frozen from fear on the spot, breath caught in my throat. Why can't I move? Why is it so cold? "Your hope is a tattered, fragile thing. It smells... divine."
One long, broken nail touches my cheek and a hiss of breath leaves my lungs with a rush of pain and power that flows through me like a dam being burst open. The blood magic ripples through me freely, lighting up my skin and seeping into my every pore and every nerve The unnatural power overwhelms me and an answering searing pain pulses against my ring-adorned thumb with an intensity that threatens to cramp the muscles along that entire limb. My vision clears from a haze of red fog, and I see my hands wrapped tightly around a too thin neck supporting a head of large rodent teeth and tiny blackened eyes. The creature's hood has blown back and its two large hands have wrapped themselves around my wrists. Frost is racing up my arms at an alarming rate as my fingers ply more pressure against the demonic creature's windpipe.
Visions flash through my mind's eye – my sisters and parents huddled together with tear-stained faces, wounded and sickly Dalish elves pressed around a waning fire, blood gushing from a bandit's chest while he takes his last breaths with a rusty sword still clutched in his trembling fist, Blight-tained wolves whimpering in pain with death clouding their canine eyes, a blond-haired boy with a demonic light creasing his youthful face, a shade's claws reaching for Sloane struggling to stand on two feet with blackness coating his daggers, children in heavy robes dusted with ash hiding between broken wooden pews with fear painted bright on their round little faces – and I yell out a strangled sound of anguish.
"What are you?" I scream at the creature while the red of my blood magic powers my reaver talent of draining the life giving essence from this creature, this spirit. It's pain is my power and fuels my strength in face of the ice burning my skin and weighing down my limbs like lead.
All thoughts of avoiding battle, of tempering my rage, and of keeping from tapping into this dark well of power are gone at the sight of that corrupted spirit's unnatural smile tinged with a dark edge and a promise of pain and suffering. "I am your lost hope turned bitter and spoiled," it wheezes out around choked breath. "I am your nightmare. I am Despair."
Its inhuman face begins to crack and crumble with large pieces of flesh falling and oozing demonic ichor around my still glowing hands. Its neck, smaller than the span of my two palms, collapses to dust between my fingers as a blast of ice licks up my body on the wake of the creature's last breath. Shuttering, and feeling like thousands of needles are stabbing into my flesh, I fall to my knees beside the spirit's body that's now fading into the ether of the Beyond. Shivers wrack my body and I struggle to breathe while my hands clench into trembling fists. I'm so cold. I'm so cold and I can still see the faces of those I've failed, of those whose loss I grieve, still playing in my mind's eye on an endless loop.
"Stop it," I whisper under my breath and bring my shaking hands to tangle in my hair while the tendrils of blood magic in my skin work to thaw me from the spirit's magic. I see my sisters again – their smiles pained and hurt instead of happy and sly.
Someone's nudging my shoulder with a cautious hand, "Little lady," the voice says urgently. I blink through the cold and pain to see blackened ash smeared across a bearded face – Amell? "We can't stop the pride demon. We need your help." He nudges me again, "Get up."
I struggle to my feet while his words click in my mind. I turn as quickly as I can to see Sten, doubled over but still standing, Sloane with his daggers buried beneath the spirit's kneecap with Randall beside him nipping at the thing's heels, Aereweld with her sword alight with spirit energy batting away the spirit's meaty hands, and Liana – she's actually launching bolts of arcane energy from the tree-line at the pride corrupted creature's chest. If she's put aside her fear for this, it must be bad.
I fumble to pull my sword from its scabbard with my hands still numb from ice and panic, and Amell lifts the faux earth of the Beyond to coat my armor in splotches of stone like he did shortly after we first met. "If you can take on a Despair demon single-handedly," he tells me, "then you go and pulverize that Pride bastard." He smiles, clasps me on the shoulder and says, "I'll watch your back."
He raises his staff and electricity launches out in a great arc towards the spirit of Pride, and I tap down on my disquiet – I have to help. I don't really have a choice but to. I remove the familiar heavy weight of my sword from its scabbard and forgo my newly acquired dagger to grasp the larger weapon with both hands. I focus on the pain of the dark magic in my skin and try to remember the particular set of sensations that leads to that fervor Morrigan had helped discover I had. My world narrows in a red-tinged scope around that demonic spirit and as pain lances down my spine, I find myself suddenly there with my blade buried deep into its grotesque purple flesh.
"Karie," Sloane wheezes and dodges around a swipe of the creature's large hand with a movement too quick for me to follow. I pull my blade up and out, feeling the wiry tissue give against the cut of steel and the sickening scrape of the sword's tip against the creature's bone reverberating down my arms. "This-" Sloane tries to speak to me again but is cut off when the spirit swipes at us both, me falling to my knees and crumpling against the dirt in a desperate attempt to avoid the hit, and Sloane scurrying backwards and swinging himself around with his blades brandished and ready to attack. "Blasted demon!" he growls and launches himself at the creature's leg while Randall's yipping proves to momentarily distract it.
A spirit born of rage bubbles out of the earth before me, between the Pride spirit's feet, with a plume of ash following it and obscuring my vision. The ash stings my eyes, and heat blossoms against my chest from where the creature has hit me. The stone against my armor melts and cracks against the fire and falls from my leathers to crumble into dust. The molten ill spirit laughs an unnatural sound and swipes one clawed hand at my chest again. I fall back on my ass, adrenaline coursing through my veins along with the blood magic feeding my strength, and I frantically kick up at its arm. It laughs again and lunges, but its tackle is blocked – blocked by Sten.
The qunari grunts in pain and pushes back against the spirit, his naked skin visibly blistered and cracked from the creature's fire-laced body. "Katara, Bas!" he shouts and takes the sword from my grip to pierce the spirit through its deformed head and ending its life in one swift move.
My heart rate spikes when I catch sight of the Pride spirit changing its focus to us now that its companion is dead, and it brings a fist right towards us. "Move!" I shout and push Sten aside with my blood magic augmented strength, throwing the seven-foot-something wall of muscle to the ground with a bright red flash of my markings bearing strength.
I can't catch the demonic spirit's hand though, knowing its far too much for the power afforded to me by those cultists now long dead, and lunge out of the way narrowly avoiding the hit. I dig my hands along the protrusions around its knuckles the second I'm on my feet, and struggle to draw its life's essence from the pit of its body. Spirits aren't alive in the same way people, or even darkspawn, are, and so it seems the stronger the spirit, the more difficult it is to pull the life from it. A burning sensation matching the pulse of blood magic in my skin grows and wells in the bottom of my stomach to alight along my nerves and make me gasp out in pain. It hurts – the struggle of fighting the spirit's energy with my own, and after a few short moments, the creature simply swats me away like a fly with a growl of fury for my efforts.
I shakily brandish my dagger, Sten still having my sword, and charge at the beast with a fervor twisting along my body and completely ignoring the pain of being tossed into the trees like I was nothing at all. There's a ringing in my head, but it's a distant thing compared to the disgust and hatred I feel for this creature and its kind. I look up mid-run and see Sloane has somehow managed to climb the creature like a tree, digging his blades into the base of the demonic spirit's skull. It cries out miserably then and brings its arms backwards, but is unable to reach Sloane and dislodge him from twisting his blades further into its flesh. It falls to a knee – Sten hacking away at the bleeding knee Sloane had dug his daggers into before with Randall aiding his efforts, and the mages throw a barrage of arcane energies and sharp boulders of stone at its vulnerable chest.
I finally reach the creature and help Sten and Randall further cripple its leg by cutting its skin open with my measly dagger and shoving my pulsing hand into the wound to feed off of the creature's pain and resume draining it of life. The ringing slows to a stop in my head, and I inhale deeply with the sensation of cool relief and coursing power while the creature weakens critically from the onslaught of our attacks.
The beast of pride then falls and dissolves into nothingness on the wake of its death.
Sloane crumples to his haunches on the illusionary forest floor as the creature fades away from him, and he visibly struggles to catch his breath. He swipes his long ichor-stained hair from his forehead with a shaking hand, his daggers at his feet, and looks up at me with hurt in the golden depths of his eyes. I scurry towards him, both pain and power blinking out of existence with the dimming of the ruddy tendrils in my skin, and pull him straighter with my hands fisting at his shoulders.
"Sloane?" I call to him with my worry leaking into my tone, "Are you okay?"
"You fought," he says and a little disbelieving chuckle bubbles from his throat. "Willingly. And you faired quite well," he smiles a bit and reaches out a hand to lay his sooty fingers against the swell of my cheek. "I am hale, dearest. You needn't worry for me."
"Um, Warden-Commander?" Someone squeaks out, and I turn with Sloane to see Liana, hand pressed against her still wounded shoulder, and now standing beside Sten who's still holding my sword, albeit shakily. "Your companion – he is injured."
"I am fit for battle yet, Bas Saarebas," Sten grumbles. He looks towards Sloane, "This is an illusion," he says. "This injury is not true."
"It still pains you," Sloane notes with a frown. Sten is burned along his right shoulder and arm – burned because he saved me from such an injury.
"I have a healing draught," Amell announces and chucks the bit of blown glass at the qunari who catches it smoothly before downing it and tossing the glass aside. The redness of his abused skin visibly lightens to a pinkish hue once the potion is drunk. He's still injured though.
"I will prepare another portal, ma'falonen," Aereweld comments and moves off to the side looking none the worse for wear.
My attention is drawn back towards Sten though when he speaks again. "You attack your enemies without fear, Bas Aqun-Athlok Sten," he says this while meeting my gaze steadily, and at first I'm confused. Sten has never said more than a handful of words to me, not that I've been overly friendly or communicable with him, but... he's complimenting me? Is that what this is? "Your abilities are commendable," he continues. "Should you choose to share your trade, Bas, I, Sten of the Beresaad, would honor the knowledge."
"You're..." my mind sputters while I try to make sense of his words. I stand slowly, helping Sloane to his feet while I do so, and continue to look at Sten with my brow furrowed in thought and my hand grasping at Sloane's. "You want to learn how to be a reaver?"
"Yes," the qunari says in his deep tones as if the very word is tiring to say.
I blink at him, and stutter, "I-I received my... my, um, trade from a... cult of blood mages," I feel Sloane's grip on my hand tighten reassuringly while the memory of waking to these markings comes to the forefront of my mind, "You remember them?" I ask tentatively. Sten was there – I remember him. "They gave me these markings," I hold up my hand to draw attention to the lines coursing along my skin, "and they made me a reaver. I... don't know how to teach it."
"Hm," the qunari hums. "My request still stands – should you discover how to teach, I would learn."
"Alright," I say simply with my lips pressed together. I think this is the strangest conversation I've had with him, and that includes the time he came up to me and Leliana while we were chatting and asked us if we were women.
"Where are the Bas Aad?" Sten then questions with his gaze flickering around the area of burnt trees and trampled vegetation. It takes me an embarrassing moment to realize that he's asking after the remainder of our companions.
"We still need to find them," Sloane answers seemingly able to understand the qunari better than I can. "They too are trapped in dreams."
"This is no dream," he says severely and quiets as his gaze settles on the growing purple wall of light Aereweld's constructing with glowing hands. "That is how you travel."
"Yes," Sloane confirms with a short nod of his head. "We still have many to find, and then one troublesome Sloth demon to kill."
...***...
A/N: I'm sad to say that I was sick last week and quickly discovered that writing with a fever was a bad idea, so I had to put this off until my next batch of free-time once I was better. I've been itching to write those fight scenes in Sten's nightmare for awhile now, since I'd decided to go ahead and use DA:I's new range of demons. And! I'm figuring out how to write Sten! XD Also, it wouldn't let me use horizontal line breaks, so I apologize for the weird formatting. We're getting through these nightmares though! Thanks for the reads readers!
Translations:
Katara, Bas! - Qunlat for 'die, thing!'
Bas Saarebas – non-qunari mage
ma'falonen – Elvish for 'my friends'
Bas Aqun-Athlok Sten – literally: non-qunari vanguard who was born one gender but lives as another. Bas meaning 'thing' used as a term to address non-qunari. Aqun-Athlok is a term used to address 'one who was born one gender but lives as another'. For qunari, women are not warriors. Qunari have distinctive male-female roles without exceptions.
Sten – the title of a qunari infantry platoon commander. Literally a vanguard
Beresaad – the title of a scouting company military unit comprised of qunari vanguards
Bas Aad – non-qunari military unit
