Fifty-nine
The point of Taesas's staff went through his chest, striking the stone wall behind him.
Time seemed to stand still as he watched the metal shaft that was once his staff fully penetrate through him, brought there by Vell's final, murderous thrust. He had wondered whether she would have the resolve to kill him, or whether when the time came, she would falter.
Despite her claims that she did not want to fight, when pressed to it, she had proved that she was ready to kill.
And yet, the fury, the rage, the strength that she had displayed to subdue him and end him, all of it was for nothing as he watched her face morph from that mix of blazing warrior and cold executioner to one of utter confusion.
What was she thinking, he wondered, as his body had faded from the physical, falling fully into the ethereal plan as the cloak of the Fade wrapped around him and took him fully out of the mortal world?
The Fade had been her weapon, grabbed and pulled and thrown around in such senseless rage, that the notion that it would be her complete undoing gave Taesas an ecstasy that rivaled even the most extreme moments of carnal pleasure.
It had been Commander Helaine who had opened the door to him at the tower of Montsimmard, who had taken the first steps with him down the path of the Chantry's vaunted Knight Enchanters. The secrets she revealed and the techniques she passed down from the texts of the church's most prized mage warriors had immediately proven that his decision to desperately press Vivienne to give them up was worth the effort.
As soon as Helaine had given him the fundamentals of the craft, he had pressed his body mercilessly to master them and explore them to their utmost limits. How many nights had he slumbered in active sleep, spirit pulled into the Fade under the power of the low-dilution lyrium he had obtained from the Seeker to pit his ethereal self against the denizens of the demonic plane in an effort to bolster his power?
Night after night after night, the tools of the Knight Enchanter had become an unparalleled set of skills in his martial arsenal.
It was as if the Chantry had designed the techniques expressly as a countermeasure to the very type of magic set against him. That was, of course, impossible, having been developed centuries ago and passed down only to a hand-picked few within the Circle over the ages. And yet, as he had first grasped their power and understood their function, he could not help but wonder whether history was indeed cyclical, and if the world had faced an opposing power such as this before.
Taesas took a step forward, his immaterial body passing around the broken spear shaft until his chest intersected with her arm. Once clear of the metal, he prepared himself for the next step, cutting the Fade cloak and rematerializing into the physical world.
As his body returned to the physical plane, the secondary effect of the cloak triggered due to the intersection of her body into his, with the powerful magical burst forcing her arm out of the space he occupied with an explosive roar of spirit magic, throwing Vell back across nave of the abandoned church. Her body struck the ground hard, bouncing and skidding across the stones dozens of feet away.
Taesas wasted no time, drawing upon the arcane powers of the Knight Enchanter, pulling the patterns and painting the interlocking glyphs around his feet. In a burst of white and green energy, the glyphs formed and rotated around him, filling the air with a resurgent energy, healing the wounds he had sustained in their last exchange and rejuvenating his body and spirit.
He watched through the haze of regenerative energy as a dazed Vell picked herself up the ground slowly and dusted herself off, perhaps still wondering what exactly had happened. She had him dead, or so she thought.
In truth, the battle, all of it up to this point, had been one elaborate, drawn out ruse. He had baited her perfectly, doing just enough to match her blow for blow. He had drawn out the fight, strung her along, goading her into more reckless and more powerful attacks, forcing her to dig deeper and deeper into herself in an effort to overcome him.
While he had spent day after day and night after night pushing himself in training to his extremes and past what he once perceived as his own physical limits, no doubt she had spent her "freedom" in idleness and complacency. She possessed brute strength, true, but in a match of fortitude and stamina, there would be no way her flippant attitude and contemptuous disregard for regimen would allow her the ability to stand against him.
A wise hunter didn't try to take his quarry in the first strike. No, the heart of the hunt was in the in the pursuit, understanding the prey, knowing its strength and exploiting its weakness until at last it was fatigued, cornered and defeated.
Vell was no different than that common boar. Strong. Wild. Reckless.
He had waited for that precise moment to lay his final trap. He had resisted for a time, watching as she poured every bit of herself into her paralytic spell, unleashing power far beyond her means to sustain. When he had finally let his defense fall and let the energy wrap around him, he had known he had won the second her body slumped, her chest heaved and the drench of sweat covered her body nicked with the cuts of his blade.
He had only given her the delusion that he was trapped and beaten, knowing that the power of his Fade cloak would shatter the shackles of her paralysis at his simplest willing.
Now, only as she returned to his feet across the chapel from him, did he unveil his final weapon, the weapon that would overwhelm and subdue her.
"Behold, the true power of the Knight Enchanters of the Chantry!" Taesas shouted over the quiet hum of the resurgent glyphs still working beneath his feet.
Taesas pulled his right arm across his chest, wrist over his heart, remembering the first time along with Helaine as she had showed him how to find and focus the arcane power. Since then, the exercise had become nearly second nature as he extended his fingers and drew the magic through his arm.
Along his forearm and hand and out across his body, the spirit blade extended, an edge of focused, humming magic, sharper than even the finest smith could hone upon any sword, axe or polearm.
Taesas raised his arm, the spirit blade coming up before his face as he displayed it proudly, eyes peering around the shimmering magical blade at Vell in her stunned silence, before he moved his arm out and snapped his elbow down to his side, the arcane weapon giving a ferocious whirr as it cut the air of the physical world.
Now, bring your fruitless attack, he thought as admired the space set between them. It would not be long now. In mere moments, Vell would face the anxious realization that she was undone.
True to his expectations, he watched Vell pull her hands to her hip. He could feel the flow of magic across the Veil twist as she pulled her power to her, ready to strike him with the force of her rift magic. She crouched slightly, holding that energy bound and taut, waiting for him to make the first move.
Taesas was happy to oblige her, stepping forward slowly out of the inner ring of his glyph and into the bailey of the outer healing ring. He kept his honed blade down at his side, standing tall and straight, one slow pace after another until he was outside the outer ring of the glyph.
As he stepped outside, the glyphs unraveled and dissipated, having served their purpose. Vell, perhaps cautious of what those glyphs might actually have been doing, tensed as the magic behind him faded and he still strode forward slowly toward her.
Still several lengths away, Vell pushed her arms forward, sending the wall of green force barreling toward him.
He watched as it approached, perceiving the physical effects of the invisible Veil approaching him in a wave. As the distance closed, he pulled his arm across his body, keeping the spirit blade low, and as the wave fell atop him, he drew his arm up, slashing vertically from below.
The wall of energy sheared like scissors through silk, the force of the magic dividing and separating around him, continuing past him, until the two halves of the wave crashed into the back of the church, shaking the structure around them.
Vell's eyes went wide as he stood unscathed before her, continuing to slowly step ahead. In a panic, she quickly drew back the energy, grabbing more of it around her and pushed forward a second wave toward him.
Taesas gauged its approach, waiting for it to nearly be upon him before raising his spirit blade and shearing the wave in two again.
With the gap between them narrowing with each step, Vell shuffled back a step as she grabbed even more energy, grasping out for whatever she might be able to grab from the ethereal plane, bundling it layer on layer on top of each other into a haphazard pile before her before wildly shoving it forward.
As the third wave, larger and more unstable than the others approached, he kept his blade down at his side. He let the cloak of the Fade wrap around him once again, removing his body from the physical world. As he slipped into the Fade, the dull colors of the world fading into the vibrant hues of the spirit world in his field of vision, the wall of energy Vell had thrown at him felt like nothing but a breeze as it passed over him.
On the other side of the Veil, the motion of the barrier between the worlds was nothing more than the ebb of the energy that filled the plane.
Taesas materialized back into the physical plane as her wave of force crashed into the back wall again, cracking stone and sending dust clouding down from the ceiling of the church as the building trembled to hold together.
He quickened his gait, pushing forward into an attack, drawing his blade up to strike.
Vell stepped backward out of the reach of the first strike, but he continued to press her, bringing a second that she only narrowly avoided. As the third strike came, a cross-slash back across her body came, she tried to pull up the Veil around her as a barrier to defend. But, as before, his spirit blade sheared the energy in two as if it had never existed at all, the edge of his magical sword cutting across her exposed forearm and leaving a streak of blood as she recoiled.
She pushed her magic down, not to attack, only to shove herself back, her feet sliding across the stones of the church floor nearly to the large table set at the back of the hall. Her hands raised, palms forward as she fired weak bursts of fire toward him.
Taesas watched the approached bolts of fire, raising his sword and striking them from the air, deflecting them to the sides before slashing the last of them in twain until the flame fizzled out.
What could she really hope to do against him in this state? She had no weapon to defend herself. No armor. He had neutralized her most powerful magic, rendering it utterly useless against him. All that remained was her more orthodox spells. Even at full strength, her fire was at worst a middling threat to him. But now, battered, exhausted and scared, there was nothing she could conjure that he could not overcome.
He pressed the attack again with the spirit blade at his side, pushing her step after step back. She dodged what she could, but unable to erect any type of barrier to repel his strikes and with no weapon to parry, he continued to paint superficial slashes upon limbs and torso too slow to escape the honed edge.
She twirled to her left, spraying a wave of fire wildly from her hands in a desperate effort to buy purchase. In the moment, he saw his final opening as he turned his shoulder and charged through the weak flames.
As he burst through the plumes of fire, heat licking at his face, he drove his shoulder into her, taking her off balance, then planted his foot in between her tired legs, sweeping them out from under her. As she began to tumble, he reached out to grab her left wrist with his open right hand and as he followed her down, driving her down into the floor.
Even as her bare back slammed into the ground, she immediately tried to scrap away. But Taesas had the size and weight advantage as he maneuvered his knees and legs to trap her down, using the grip on her wrist to pin her arm at her side.
His left elbow pressed down into the bicep of her right arm, holding it not by force, but by the virtue of the honed edge of the spirit blade that he pressed nearly to the glistening flesh of her throat.
"That's enough!" he shouted, mere inches from her face as he distributed his body weight to hold her, his voice nearly fierce enough to drip slather onto her cheeks. "You're beaten!"
Taesas inched the blade just a bit closer, until the thrumming heat and energy of the spirit blade nearly left a burn upon her neck. She momentarily tried to squirm free, but he pressed down, ensuring that his pin held.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Vell grunted between her teeth, trying not to move her jaw too much lest she cut herself on the edge of his blade.
Taesas glanced down to his right hip as he felt a bit of heat, noting the small ball of fire she held in her hand just above where his hand held her wrist down to the floor. She twisted her hand as best she could, pushing the flame as closely as she could to his flank.
"Don't be a fool," Taesas warned. "You know that spell is too weak to overcome me before I drive this blade through your throat."
She didn't respond, but she also didn't pull back the ball of fire at his hip. Her eyes were locked into his. She didn't blink. No doubt her mind was racing, trying to think if there was a way to escape. He recognized the look well. It was that of the boar cornered in the thicket, trying to decide whether it should try a last-gasp attempt to flee or whether to lower its head, bare its tusks and charge one last time.
"It's over, Vell," Taesas said calmly. "Surrender peacefully and we can put an end to this madness."
Her eyes darted over his face, searching for some weakness, scanning frantically for some hope of escape. There was none. He had played this game and played it well. He had won. She had lost.
Her eyes stopped bouncing as they met his again. His gaze was just as focused downward on her, unblinking, ready for the instant when she would decide her fate, one way or another.
She swallowed, the bulge in her throat as she forced down her saliva nearly touching the edges of his spirit blade. She struggled to breathe with his weight atop her as she was quiet for a long moment. He could feel movement in her wrist as she moved her fingers holding the ball of fire at his side.
Tears began to roll out of the corners of her eyes and down the side of her face, although her expression did not change, she did not blink or whimper or make a sound. They were merely a symptom of acceptance that the battle between them was indeed over.
Her lips opened just a bit, then closed, then opened again as she summoned the words.
"You'll have to kill me then," she said, the pulse of tears growing a bit stronger as she vocalized her own sentence. "Because I'm never going back."
The words escaped as a hiss, filled with such malice, such resolve that her could feel the immediate change in her body underneath him. Where he might have expected her to go limp, the submit, instead, it seemed like every muscle tightened at once, hardening her entire being as she prepared for her last moment. She continued to hold the ball of flame in her palm.
"It doesn't have to end like this," Taesas said, giving her one last chance to change her mind.
"It does," she disagreed, lifting her head up off the floor until her throat pressed against the blade, the energy crackling as it cut flesh on contact, her mouth tightening slightly at the rush of pain as. "Do it."
The burst of electric across the side of his face and the roar in his ear startled Taesas, tendrils of shock spreading across his cheek and zapping his eye. The impact knocked him back slightly, his arm coming up by instinct to protect his body, lifting the blade away from Vell's throat.
At the same time, he felt the blast of fire up his left side, catching the long cape behind him aflame as Vell summoned what was left of her strength to rock his body weight off her, allowing her to roll to the side and throw him off before she rolled the other direction into a crouching position.
Taesas whirled, spinning himself back onto his feet, the left side of his face a bit numb as he stretched singed flesh and blinked his left eye. He could feel the heat of the burning cape behind him and pulled the cord at his neck to let the garment fall to the ground behind him as he looked up to see what had transpired.
He was met by the cheering of children.
"Great shot!" one boy yelled as a gaggle of boys and girls bounced and shouted in the rear doorway of the chantry.
The older boy reached down and patted a little girl on the shoulder, an elf girl, two hands clutched around a wooden stick taller than she was, one arm of a single-eyed doll held in her palm against the shaft, the filthy toy dangling down in front of her.
"Are you OK Mama Vell?" one of the children shouted.
Vell was crouched on the ground away from him, her hand pressed to her neck over the bloody cut she had given herself as she still struggled to breath. Both of her forearms were streaked with blood from the wounds she had taken from the edge of his spirit blade. She looked over at the group of children gathered in the back doorway of the chapel, one point of a triangle made between them, him and her.
"I told you not to come out here!" she scolded, half coughing out the words as she found her voice.
The oldest boy in the group, tall and skinny, stepped forward from the group, hoisting a soldier's sword in his two hands.
"Go away," he said, his hands fumbling on the grip of the sword as he tried to figure out exactly where to place his feet as he held it. He was no soldier, just some stupid boy playing with a sword. "Leave us alone!"
Taesas ignored him, instead looking around him at the little elf girl still holding onto the stick. She stood there, trembling, staring at him as he peered her down. She couldn't have been more than six or seven years old. For her to be able to conjure magic was not completely unheard of, but to fling a coherent spell a few dozen feet away on target, that was unusual for someone so young.
"Micah, put that thing away and take the others back into the dormitory!" Vell shouted at the boy. "It's not safe here!"
The elf girl's face twisted and she dropped the stick she was holding, tears rushing down her face as she stood in place and began to bawl. She didn't lose her grip on the filthy doll hanging from her hand.
"Why are you crying, girl?!" Taesas bellowed, loud enough to startle the boy with the sword, nearly causing him to drop the blade. His shouting only made the elf girl cry harder and recoil. "You have been blessed with a gift, with power that the other rats around you could scarcely comprehend!"
"Tae!" Vell shouted. He ignored her.
"You are are I alike! Blessed by Andraste, given a gift bestowed upon on a selected few! And you stand there, crying, afraid of the power you possess!"
"Stop it, Tae!" Vell shouted again.
"You should be commended for your bravery and your skill. To so cleanly strike the First Enchanter of the Circle of Montsimmard, few can claim to have accomplished such a feat. With the right training and guidance, you could become something greater, something more than the filth that surrounds and fills this world," he said.
The boy with the blade shifted a step, stepping in front of the crying elf girl, whose loud bawling echoed around the high ceilings of the chapel. "Leave her alone!"
"This is precisely what I mean," Taesas said with disdain, pointing a finger accusingly at the teen. "Insolent, mundane human whelps in need of correction. Tell me, boy, what do you plan to do with that blade? Are you going to kill me? Are you prepared to take my life with that sword you clutch so perilously in your fingers?"
"Tae, leave them out of this!" Vell shouted for a third time.
"If I have to," the boy said, his bravery undercut by the quaver in his voice and the way his elbows and knees trembled as he said it.
"I see," Tasesas said, chuckling to himself.
With a snap of his finger, crystals of ice began to form and encase the sword, startling the boy and causing him to drop the frozen blade, which clanged to the ground at his feet.
Taesas raised the palm of his right hand to his shoulder, the air crackling and snapping as a lance of ice formed above his hand, hovering there as it formed into a razor point.
"A word of warning to you, and a lesson," Taesas said. "Brave, stupid boys who want to play with swords always end up humbled at the feet of their betters."
"Tae! No!" Vell screamed as he flicked his fingers forward and the lance of ice shot ahead toward the boy, paralyzed with fear before him.
He felt the wind as the green streak from his right side blazed across the distance toward the children. The boy was thrown backward, knocked into the wall by the force of a rushing Vell.
The green streak disappeared in an instant as the lance of ice found purchase, the spear driving deeply into Vell's flank as she threw her body in its path.
For the first time in years, Vell screamed in pain.
It was not a conscious decision.
As the lance of ice struck her left side under her armpit, tearing flesh and muscle as it drove into her side, the sudden flare of agony was more than her mind could prevent.
It had been her willpower that caused her to bite her tongue bloody as the savage lashing of the Templars tore flesh off her back, her choice to press her jaw together as hard as it would go and hold a lid on any vocalization of pain that tried to bubble up her throat. In the Circle, she had overcome the nature of her body with the strength of her mind and made pain into a choice, one that she could not choose not to feel, but one that she could choose not to acknowledge and vocalize.
And yet, Vell now found there were some things beyond the ability of the mind to overcome.
As her body slammed into the floor, the impact of the lance of frost threw her back, her body sliding nearly to the group of children crowded into the doorway. As her body instinctively tried to curl, her left arm came into contact with the ice jutting from just under her armpit. She couldn't seem to open her eyes and all she could see was flashes of light as the waves of pain emanated through her.
There were muffled noises she could hear in her ears, but couldn't make out the sounds. Her jaw gaped, her mind unable to send a message to close it through the flood of agony through her ribcage. One of the indistinct sounds she heard, she thought, was herself. She could feel the vibrations in her throat, knowing that she had to be making some kind of noise. Whether she was still screaming, groaning or unintelligibly wailing, she couldn't be sure.
She could feel the floor under her body as she shoved against it, the tips of her feet scraping against the stones as she tried to roll onto her right side, only succeeding to push the side of her head and her right shoulder into the floor hard enough to allow her to lift and get her right arm under her chest. Her hand groped wildly, feeling along her left flank, until her fingertips touched something long and cold.
She wrapped her fingers around the lance of ice protruding from her side and yanked, screaming aloud once again as the frozen spear began to slide against the rent flesh inside of her. Her entire body trembled as she struggled to extract the ice, eyes rolling into the back of her head and nearly gagging on her own tongue until she could be sure the razor point was out of her.
When the tension gave way as she twisted and pulled, she knew it had to be out and released her fingers, the lance of bloodied ice thudding as it fell to the ground. Her hand went to the wound, a new shock shooting through her spine as her cold fingers were met by a warm mess of blood pulsing from the wound.
She opened her eyes for the first time, trying or regain her awareness. All she could see was the texture of the stones and the bits of dust with her cheek pressed hard to the ground, the roughness of the stones chafing her skin.
Vell forced her neck to move, the slight movement causing a blast of pain from her side that washed across every part of her body until she could see Tae standing across the chapel. He stood still, both of his arms down at his sides, watching her with a blank and stern look upon his face.
Get up, she told herself, focusing her will to force the command down to her hands and feet.
Her limbs tried to obey, her legs moving until her toes pressed against the ground and her knees balanced against the floor. Her left arm didn't respond. She couldn't feel it, the limb feeling like nothing more than a heavy weight hovering above a sea of continuing agony. Her right arm obeyed, moving underneath her chest. Her hand was covered in blood, dark and warm and thick, so much that she could barely see the color of her flesh underneath.
She tried to push, her legs feeling heavy and tired, her arm soft and weak. As she tried to press her palm against floor, her hand slid, leaving a streak of slick blood where it had slipped.
Get up.
Her limbs scrabbled against the ground, every movement like torture no matter how small it was. She tried to curl, to form a base, to lift herself off the ground. But it was hard to focus, hard to coordinate her arms and legs, each of which felt like there were separated by miles between.
Get up!
The sharp lances of pain were fading into a general throbbing dullness, her eyelids feeling heavy and her mind growing slow. She felt tired, as if she could just close her eyes and drift to sleep. Her bloody fingertips scratched against the floor, trying to obey the will of her mind, but unable to do little else but press superficially to the ground.
I can't.
She shifted to allow her right arm back under body. Her shaking hand once more touched the hole underneath her arm. It was cold. And warm. And wet. And slippery. It was all she could do to hold her palm there, covering it as she could feel the pulses of wetness oozing around the edges of her hand.
She forced her eyes to stay open, looking at Taesas, her lips quivering and trembling. She couldn't feel the floor underneath her face anymore.
All she could do was lie there.
Weakly.
Watching.
Waiting.
Dying.
Taesas watched as the last bit of fight, the last ounce of strength, faded, and Vell's body grew still.
None of the children moved, all paralyzed and unable to even muster a sound, aside from the elf girl who continued to bawl. The boy, the one Vell had thrown her body in front of, rubbed his head as he picked himself up off the ground after being slammed into the wall.
When he opened his eyes and saw Vell squirming and bleeding on the ground, he looked at the frozen sword first, then at Taesas, then began to crawl backward away without a sound, too afraid to even inch toward him.
Taesas turned to the sound of the church doors banging open loudly behind him, looking over his shoulder as a thin human girl burst into the chapel, wet with rain and out of breath. She stopped two steps into the church as she took in the scene, her eyes widening as she spotted the bloody body on the floor.
"Vell?" the girl called weakly, her voice cracking. There was no movement. No answer.
"VELL!" the girl screamed, tears streaking her cheeks. She crouched low, the tension in her body like a cat arching its back and baring its fangs in an alley, as her hands swooped behind her, ripping knives from their sheaths. "GET AWAY FROM HER!"
The girl charged, rushing wildly ahead. Taesas turned to regard her, waiting for her to approach. She sprinted quickly and low to the ground, leaping into the air, twin daggers hoisted over her head as she flew toward him.
He raised his hand, the pulse of force magic catching her in midair and sending her flying backward. The girl twisted, hitting the ground, skitting with a loud screech as the blades of her daggers dragged across the ground. She righted herself, spinning and shoving off again, charging toward Taesas once more.
She zigged across the gap, darting in and out, her arms back and daggers low as she barreled forward. The girl kept her feet on the ground this time and Taesas let her close the distance. As she stepped within melee range, her arms flailed out, throwing strikes at him with the knives, swinging in every direction in an effort to draw blood.
He moved, dodging her wild attacks, raising a barrier to turn back one knife strike aimed for his left shoulder, causing her arm to bounce back. She continued moving ahead, screaming and crying and swinging, rage-blinded by her own tears. As her left arm came in, he raised his hand, catching her wrist, squeezing and twisting. She let out a yelp as he rotated her arm around, forcing her to drop the knife in her hand as he spun her around.
Taesas kicked the knife away and let her go. She immediately turned around, still swinging the other blade in her right hand. He stepped back, out of the way of a horizontal cut so wide that even the most amateur soldier could have avoided it. She stepped in again and he raised his other arm, spinning it under her elbow, grabbing as he pulled her in, locking her wrist under his armpit. He applied pressure, lifting her arm to put strain in the wrong direction on her elbow until she cried out and dropped the second knife behind him.
He twirled his arm, releasing her and shoving her backward. She still didn't stop.
Although disarmed, she charged again, her fingers bent into claws as she swiped at him with her nails like a wild and wounded animal. She could hardly even see him, shrieking and crying as she tried to scratch in a pathetic, futile display.
As she nearly fell on top of him, he reached out and grabbed her by the throat, holding her at arms length as he pressed his hand under her jaw and lifted her slightly off her feet. Even as she coughed as his fingers closed around her neck, her arms still swung, her nails scraping uselessly against the armor on his forearm.
"That's enough," Taesas said as he let her go, her feet touching down to the frost glyph he laid there just before she dropped. The burst of frost encased her body, nearly freezing her stiff. Taesas grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, drawing the spirit energy to his hand again as he reformed the blade of the Knight Enchanters and raked the edge across the muscle of her legs, hamstringing her.
As her legs began to collapse from under her at the wound, he gave her a shove with a burst of force magic that sent her flying across the nave, her body tumbling and rolling as it fell until she came to rest face down on the stone.
The girl pushed her hands against the ground, trying to get up, but wailed as she tried to move her disabled legs, the shallow but effective wound keeping her from finding her feet. Her torso flopped back down to the ground as she lifted her head toward him.
"Damn you," she leered weakly.
"And what did you think you would accomplish, attacking me alone?" Tasesas asked, turning his back to Vell and the children and the back of the chapel as he took a few steps closer to her.
The girl pressed her face to the floor for a moment, grunting in pain, before she swallowed it down in favor of a laugh. She looked back at up at him, smiling and laughing even as tears continued down her face.
"I didn't come alone," she said, then took a deep breath and pursed her lips together, summoning a loud and shrill whistle that bounced around the walls and high ceiling of the church.
Taesas glanced around as the doors of the church banged open, at the front, the sides and the rear of the chapel, and dozens of people flooded in through the open entryways. They stepped inside, just enough to fan out in a ring around him.
They were peasants, mostly, some carrying cooking knives, wood axes, some with rudimentary clubs and cudgels. Taesas turned, watching the girl's reinforcements flood in. On the left wall, there was a dwarf carrying a pair of axes and an darker-skinned elf woman with a longbow already drawn and a brightly-feathered arrow held against the string.
In the back, someone was shooing the children out of the room, while an elf slid to the ground at Vell's side, his staff clattering against the floor. Taesas observed him for a moment, recognizing him as one of the mage cohort from back at Skyhold who had trained among Vell and her group of malcontents.
Taesas looked around as he tossed a series of glyphs in a ring around him in case any of this mob got too overeager and decided to try to rush him, then summoned the spirit blade to his arm again and pulled an aura of frost to his other hand, just to warn them from doing anything too stupid.
One woman stepped ahead cautiously and scooped up the wounded girl, wrapping her arms around shoulders and pulling the girl back to the relative safety of the outer wall. In between grimaces of being moved, the girl locked eyes with Taesas and smiled again.
As he looked at the faces of the villagers arrayed against him, roused from their homes in the middle of the night to no doubt answer an alarm call to action, there was one common thing among the hard-worn peasant faces of the humans and elves that had gathered against him.
They hated him.
There was fear there, between the dead Seeker and the shattered Templars and the bloodied Vell lying about. They would be fools not to wonder what they had gotten themselves into. But their tired, haggard faces were all bent into expressions of wrath and despisement. Whether they knew they stood no earthly chance against him in combat, he was convinced that they would be willing to die trying.
"Bloody Maker, Vell, what have you done?"
Merin's face was blanched of color as he carefully lifted her hand from her side, grimacing to himself as he laid his eyes upon the mess of blood pouring out of her. Vell blinked at the burst of white light as he held his hands over her side, focusing his healing magic down into her. She felt like she could breathe again, like the heavy weight that was crushing her had been lifted a bit.
"Cat," Vell said weakly, finding her voice in the reprieve granted to her by his magic.
"She'll be fine," Merin said quietly. "I told her to wait for me, but she ran off. Just as brave and impatient as you. Twice as stupid though. She's lucky she didn't get herself killed."
Vell would have laughed if she had strength left to laugh. "Don't let him hurt anyone else."
"You need to worry about you," Merin said. "We're going to get you out of here."
"You won't be able to close that wound, rift mage," Taesas shouted in their direction.
Merin ignored him as he continued to work his healing magic along her side. Vell could feel a bit of her strength returning, although the numbness in her side wasn't fading and the pain through her chest wasn't going away either.
"The wound is held open by a lingering frost from my spell. You can repair some of the damage, but you won't be able to close it. Not as long as I maintain the spell," Taesas said.
Was that why she still felt so cold? Some secondary impact of his spell, to ensure the lethality of the wound?
Vell flinched as one of Merin's fingers touched her, probing the edges of the gaping hole in her side.
"Damn him," Merin whispered. "He's right. I can relieve some of the pain, close the other cuts, but I won't be able to stop this bleeding."
"Why don't you just release that spell, then, mage?" Vell recognized the loud, low, gruff voice. That was Roggi. A little slurred too. No doubt he had been at the inn, drinking, as was usual whenever he was back in Halamshiral.
"I will, if you all stand down and Vell chooses to surrender," Taesas said. He reached to his belt and pulled down the collar he had been carrying for her arrest. She could see the glowing lyrium-laced metal.
"Or you could just release the spell and walk away, with both of your legs still attached to that body of yours."
"Don't let him hurt anyone else," Vell said to Merin.
"Let me-"
"No," Vell cut him off. "Merin, please."
"You should be careful who you're threatening, dwarf."
"Help me stand up," Vell said to Merin.
"I've killed more than a few mages in my day. You and that shiny whatever that is don't frighten me."
"Vell, you're in no condition-"
"Please, Merin, help me stand."
"And I've killed more than a few dwarves. They always think their innate magical resistance will protect them. It never does."
Merin cut his healing spell and slipped his arms around Vell, helping to lift her. Every movement was agony. Her legs were dead underneath her. Merin grunted as he lifted, having to hoist her entire weight.
"You might get lucky and kill me, but you won't be able to defend yourself against all of us."
Taesas laughed, turning his head as he watched Merin lifting Vell to her feet, her right arm slung around Merin's neck and his arms around her blood-drenched waist, holding her up as best he could.
Talon pulled her bowstring a little farther, the creaking of the bow audible as she drew it to its limit. Vell looked at Roggi, whose fingers were dancing along the grip of his axes. He looked at her, giving her a little nod. He was ready to fight. All he was waiting for was her signal.
Vell looked around the room. Roggi was ready for a brawl, with Talon at the ready over his right shoulder, arrow pointed at Taesas. Gayle and Mai from the bakery were both there, huddled close to each other at the far wall, Gayle clutching the club she kept under the counter in case of thieves and Mai holding onto a long knife.
A few of Roggi's Kingsmen were scattered in. Vell recognized several people from the nearby homes, elves she had passed in the street or those who had dropped off a little spare food here and there for the orphans. There were other faces she didn't even recognize.
Outside of Roggi and Talon and a few of the half-drunk Kingsmen, these weren't soldiers, weren't fighters. They were just normal people. They were just a mob, roused out of their homes in the middle of the night.
"Tell him, Vell. I don't want to kill all of these people," Taesas said. "But I will, if they force me to."
Vell looked in his eyes and saw that look, a look she knew too well, a look she recognized on his face because she had most often seen it on her own face. It was the look of a person willing to do whatever it took, no matter the cost, to accomplish their goal.
If there was a Maker sitting on a golden throne somewhere in the Fade, Vell was sure that he was wicked for having ever crossed her path with Tae's.
"Enough talk!" Roggi said, hunching as he readjusted his grip on his axe.
"Stop!" Vell shouted as loud as she could, the effort causing a spike of pain through her. She fell more heavily into Merin's arms, his bloodied hands struggling to hold her sweat-slickened skin. "Roggi, Talon, all of you, stop. Lower your weapons."
She caught eyes with Roggi, whose jaw was tight. He was ready to strike, to fight to the death. He shook his head just slightly. He knew. She would have smiled a sad smile if she had the strength in her cheeks. He understood, regardless.
Roggi blinked, then lowered his axe. Behind him, Talon let the tension of her bow and lowered it, but left the arrow against the string.
"If I agree to go with you, do you promise to leave everyone else alone?" Vell asked as she turned her attention back to Taesas.
"Assuming no one is foolish enough to provoke me," he said, not looking at Roggi but almost certainly directing the comment toward the mercenary leader, "you have my word."
"Don't do this, Vell," Merin whispered into her ear.
She felt bad as she heard the tremble in his voice. He knew, too. He could see clearly what was about to transpire.
"Then I surrender."
Vell didn't have any fight left to give anyway, but if this was the only way to ensure an end to this bloody madness, then she would take it. She would have gladly fought to the end, resisted to the last and died in defiance if it was simply she and Tae.
But that had all changed the second that bolt of electric had hit Taesas in the face, as the children stood there, celebrating, until in retaliation he had almost skewered Micah. Then there was Cat. Merin. Roggi. Talon. Gayle and Mai. The Kingsmen. The townsfolk.
Taesas was right. He would kill them all if he had to. He'd go through them to get to her.
Many, many years ago she had decided her life was worth nothing. She kept living, kept surviving if for no other reason than to send a giant "fuck you" to everyone who would have been better off if she didn't exist.
But that wasn't the case any more. Her lifeline was tangled into too many other lives, lives that she wouldn't willingly endanger just to save her own. The cost of spite was a cost not worth paying any more.
Maybe nothing had changed. Maybe her life still wasn't worth anything. If that was the case, it made it easier to decide to give it up in exchange to protect many others worth much more.
Vell wheezed, still unable to feel her legs under her. She might have laughed at her own sad state if laughing wouldn't have hurt like hell itself. She raised her eyes, looking at the group of people who had charged blindly into this death trap of a chantry in some ill-conceived effort by a fear-crazed teenage girl screaming her way down the block.
They were good people who didn't need to get caught up in her problems. Didn't need to get hurt or die for her sake.
"Merin," Vell said, grunting as she felt another wave of pain wash through her left side. "Help Cat. Make sure someone looks out for the kids. Send someone to the Chantry and let them collect their dead. For what it's worth, tell them I'm sorry it came to this."
Merin nodded, putting on the best brave face he could, although Vell knew that if she asked him to stand there, holding her until she died in his arms, he'd do it, and weep the whole time.
Taesas glanced around the room, checking to make sure no one still had their weapons raised against him. When he was satisfied, he straightened and snapped his fingers, unraveling the glyphs on the ground around him and letting the blade of magical energy on his arm retract and disappear. He held the lyrium-laced collar at his side, waiting.
"I'm ready," Vell said.
Taesas waited, checking Roggi out of the side of his eye before he stepped forward to where she stood in Merin's arms. He lifted the collar, opening it and holding it up before her.
"I'm glad you've come to your senses," he said, "to not test the limits of my strength."
Despite the pain she knew it would cause, Vell did laugh, a short chuckle that was followed immediately by a grunt, a grimace and a cough that hurt twice as bad as the laugh. She may have been beaten, but that didn't mean she had to stop fighting.
"Strength?" Vell said, thinking about laughing again but instead opting to spare herself the suffering. "No, Tae, I don't think so. You are and always have been alone and lost. Acting tough to hide how weak and scared you really are.
"Just like me."
With that, Vell raised her head, stretching her neck up as far as she could, exposing herself to the collar, in one last petty act of defiance.
She felt the cold touch of the metal shackle against her throat and listened to it click and lock closed. Even as weak as she felt, she immediately felt weaker as the magic of the collar nullified her magic, cutting her connection to the Fade.
Unable to hold her head up, her chin fell, head dangling across the rough edge of collar pressed into the flesh of her throat.
She felt a loosening in her left side, followed by a sharp heat, followed by a soothing numbness as Taesas released his ice and pressed his hand to the wound, beginning to seal it with his superior healing magic. Unable to lift her head, she could only look at her distorted reflection in his the metal of his shiny breastplate as he began to take her from Merin's arms.
She looked like shit. Felt like shit. As useless now as shit.
That was the cost of giving a damn, she guessed.
The last thing Vell saw was Tae's palm over her eyes as she felt the familiar touch of magic prickling her skin.
"Sleep," Taesas commanded as he cast the spell.
Vell slumped, asleep, into his custody.