Red light flashed across her HUD, the line that marked her shield strength entirely empty. She blinked, twisted to dodge a wash of plasma before firing a quick burst to silence it. Another swell of light on her left and she moved without input straight behind -
Three slams of force into her back and a muffled warmth. Ozone and the stench of burning alloy trickled into her nose.
She snapped around. An Ultra was bellowing and charging straight at her. The barrel of her gun swiveled; her finger depressed the trigger and didn't let go. Ten meters and a torrent of plasma that carved smoking divots into the concrete between them. Five meters, half mag. The hingehead roared and hurled his rifle to the side in favor of the sword at his hip.
Three meters, five rounds, and his shield popped.
She adjusted, flickering reticule landing on the thing's neck. It was quick though, quick enough to raise a palm and armored wrist over the gap. Lead mulched his palm, but it stopped there.
A roar of triumph and it lunged. The hissing blade passed a scant few inches from her side as she stepped into its strike and wrapped the thing's arm in one of her own. The sickly sharp sound of bone snapping as she yanked up on the trapped limb under the elbow; its pulverized hand wrapped around her helmet and squeezed.
Another roar, of pain this time, that morphed to a gurgle when her knife slipped through its soft palate and into the brain. The grip went slack and she shouldered the corpse forward off her.
There was time for a breath as she watched his white armor slowly turn purple.
Blue tore through the air over her shoulder in burning streaks, two bolts catching her in the bicep and singing the skin beneath it. Her body hit the dirt while one hand snatched up the Ultra's sword. She grunted as her eyes flicked to the motion tracker, hands flowing smoothly through the motions of popping a fresh magazine into her rifle without looking. Two spare.
More blue. Angry bolts of fire that howled over her head and stained the air cerulean.
She popped up to answer; fifteen bullets to pop the shield, five more through its neck. Another wave, and she pivoted. Another twenty rounds and a wail snatched away by the glassing's sandstorm.
It went on like that through her last magazine; only the occasional dash to fresh cover to forestall grenades breaking the accelerating rhythm. Faster and faster it pounded, more blue rushing in to fill the gaps between the dust in the sky. More hingeheads, more roars. More bodies.
But closer. They were getting closer.
The gaps in the melody where she'd pop up to fire had vanished under a wave of cobalt. But she had to answer. To let it crescendo and consume her would be fatal.
Her head snapped out first, then the rifle. Two rounds towards a rushing elite at the plasma grenades on his waist. A wash of blue as he and three others were instantly immolated, and then a bolt caught her in the face.
There was a flash of light and four sharp stings across the bridge of her nose and cheek as her HUD shattered. Wind on her face.
When she opened her eyes there was a hole in her visor. Pale beige land, cracked with dryness and peppered with debris peered back at her curiously. It was framed in black and grey - the remnants of her visor - like a tear in a painting.
She watched an elite, entirely silent save for the scraps that dribbled through the tear in her eyesight.
A curse slipped her lips; the bolt must've fried every system in the helmet. She was blind and deaf with it on.
Dead with it off, a voice from Onyx whispered.
Her hands found the seal, popped it, and ripped it off. The world rushed back in to meet her, sharp and jagged and unpleasant. She forgot how much her helmet evened out the world's input so that nothing overwhelmed or deafened her. Without her helmet the world was bordering on too much too fast: the light from the glassing painfully bright, the bark of plasma rifles and her automated answers near deafening.
She hurled the thing away and primed a grenade. Her last.
Her legs launched her out of cover at full tilt, sidearming a bright blue grenade at a clump of targets as she did. She didn't watch it connect. Knew it would stick. Instead she was pivoting toward the closest pair of footsteps: a Minor, three meters. Ten rounds to pop its shields, and a sidestep past the energy dagger aimed at her stomach. Her own sword didn't miss, and split him from chest to shoulder in a burst of hissing blood and steam.
The assault rifle slipped to the dirt in exchange for catching his falling plasma rifle. She spun toward the next closest pair and rinsed it in blue until it stopped moving. Then the second, then the third, and the fourth, ignoring the plasma scores she collected like tokens. Ignoring the heat from the massive plasma beam that stalked ever closer. Ignoring the charred and scattered human bodies. Ignoring the pain.
The tenth was too close; dropped half his shields, but he just laughed and kept charging. Her blade met his and he pushed while she spun. The lack of resistance sent him spilling forward, and her spin ended with the blade cutting him in half.
Back to the footsteps. Bury them in plasma even while they crept ever closer, while more and more kept surging forward on the fringes of the dust storm through the husks of bombed-out buildings.
Another too close to kill in time, and another dispatched with the sword. Her spare hand dropped the plasma rifle, snagged the energy dagger on his belt and ignited it before she spun to face -
A blade - white-hot and iridescent - ripped through the air where her head had been, a roar in its wake. The dagger found his throat and the roar turned to choking. Footsteps behind her and she moved behind the dying hingehead to shove it bodily into its charging friend.
Spin, stab, sidestep, parry. Sidestep, parry, stab. Another rhythm. A new one. Punctuated with the roars of elites that leapt onto the jutting ribs of her half-buried concrete cover. Underlined by the endless rumble-hiss of a shipborne plasma beam creeping nearer.
Spin, stab, parry - an elite leapt on the spine of concrete behind her, laughed, and brought his sword down. It met air, and hers met his chest.
The plasma fire didn't stop, but most of it slammed into the shielded backs of those surrounding her with only a few slipping through to splash across her body. But it kept her suit hot, turned the plating to slag that melted down to cloy the joints.
A grunt slipped her lips as a fresh volley of plasma burst across her flank, scorched it. The pain was distant and vague and barely noticeable under the rhythm of strikes, but, when she stepped left, her side all but gave way.
She stumbled, twisting halfway to barely dodge a slash of a sword that nicked her back. A step forward and she shoved her sword up through the thing's pelvis and out the small of its back. Instinct had her lurching back to dodge the hiss of plasma and blade that flew through where her head had been.
Dagger and knife. That's all she had now.
Against a ring of elites that howled and gnashed their teeth around her. Against the blazing sun that the plasma beam had grown to. Against every Covenant left on Reach.
Warmth trickled across her brow and nose, across her side and into the gap between skin and suit all the way down her thigh. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to stand. When she flexed her arms the cooled slag prevented full range of motion.
Faintly, under the cacophony of the world around her, she thought she could hear singing. Voices so thin and soft they were like the whisper of rustling leaves. A lullaby, and a distant memory.
She bared her teeth at the ring of elites, the taste of copper on her lips. None of them moved. All of them growled.
The sandstorm picked up, and with it, the song.
An elite howled and charged, and she parried, hamstrung him, and snapped his neck. Another followed immediately after - this time from behind her - a downward slash that cleaved through the shoulder of her kill. Her energy dagger found the line of his spine and followed it up and up until it erupted out the top of his shoulder in a torrent of sparkling violet. A third followed, then a fourth, and a fifth. One at a time to fight her.
The plasma fire had stopped.
Another, and another, and another. Constant howls and growls and spurts of blood until the ground squelched beneath her feet and the elites got too angry or too fed up to watch her take down any more.
They rushed all at once, a tide of colors tinted beige and dead by the dust. She couldn't swing her arm without stabbing something. One kill, and a sluggish spin onto the next until a point blank plasma volley caught her in the chest and sent her stumbling backward. The hum of a charging rifle and she twisted, ignoring the spikes of pain in her chest.
Her dagger caught the elite in the throat right before another tackled her to the ground. It laughed, roared, and the song grew louder. Her head shifted left and a sparkling blade of plasma impaled the dirt where her skull had been. Warmth cascaded across her chest as her dagger found his guts and opened him up, a knife to the neck and a knee to the chest to get him off her because being on the ground meant death and -
A hand in red plates shoved the corpse to the side and filled the spot it left. A Zealot, his scarlet blade already in motion toward her chest. She watched it shine for a moment on its path before it slipped into her stomach and pinned her to the ground.
The thing leaned close to smile at her. She coughed, splattered its face with blood, and smiled back.
And she stabbed it. Again and again and again, as fast and hard as she could. It gurgled a question, she laughed, and then it lurched forward to drag the blade through the ground.
And split her in half.
A charred line from hip to shoulder, a burst of wet, sticky scarlet across her cheek. A crescendo as the Zealot collapsed on top of her.
A blazing, nauseous sky with no stars in sight. A laugh that sounded more like a gasp.
And then she died.
Being dead didn't feel like she expected it to, in that it felt like anything at all.
It felt like pain; like someone had unspooled her vitals and tossed them on a campfire to sizzle. It felt like someone had turned her skull into a drum, it felt like she was breathing through a mess of broken glass.
It hurt, and that was surprising.
There were... voices too. Distant and soft, like they were talking to her through a bulkhead. Nobody she recognized. No fathers, no Spartans. Just... people. People dragging a raw, caustic disappointment through her chest.
They spoke in soft, cooing tones with lilting syllables, but that was all she could decipher.
There was a face swaying on a field of mottled brown.
And then the pain returned to drown her.
She tried to move but couldn't.
She tried again, her brain fuzzy with pain and unable to comprehend. Then again. On the fourth time it clicked. Bound. She was bound.
That realization had adrenaline spiking through her system and pushing the haze of pain back. One at a time, feeling in her limbs returned to her. One at a time, they hurt.
Captured then, by the Covenant. For sport or information.
That... that didn't quite make sense, but she wasn't sure why. It had to be though, she was alive after all.
Her senses returned slowly. First hearing (it was mostly silent save for a soft crackling) then smell (was that woodsmoke?). Sight was taking longer.
A minute later she realized her eyes were closed.
The first try to get them open did nothing, and so did the second. The third had them cracking open only to close just as fast. It was brighter than a star and hurt just as much to look at.
She gave it a count of thirty and tried again. It hurt less that time.
And that was the routine she slipped into: one count, a crack of her eyes a little bit wider each time. Each time with a little less pain.
Brown was the first color to come through. Then orange, and then black. There were no more after that, only a steady deepening in composition and clarity that let the colors shade together into something resembling reality.
It was... soft, whatever it was. And it didn't look Covenant. Had Insurrectionists captured her maybe? Or maybe some UNSC stragglers had dragged her into a safehouse on Reach.
But that... that shouldn't have been possible, right?
Her right hand twitched on the bed. She'd... she'd almost died. She should have died. That Zealot had cut her in half. The fist was still on her chest, slicing a line burning through her and sharpening with every beat of her heart. It hurt. Oh fuck it hurt.
A groan trickled between her lips and into the air. Then another when she tried to look around. It morphed into a garbled scream when she tried to sit up, and the door flew open with it.
More adrenaline, more clarity. The shape looked almost human, but that didn't quell the panic and the pain and the aggression that coursed through her veins. It said something, it said something loud and stepped forward; placed a hand across her chest.
Her own caught it before it could touch. Fast for a human, slow for a Spartan. The shape yelped and-and-
"Who?" she tried to say, but the dried sandpaper of her mouth and throat turned it into a cough.
He - it looked like a he at least - said something again, something that entered her ears but got lost on the way to her brain.
Her hand gripped tighter. "Who?" She was able to hoarsely growl.
"Llewelyn! I'm Llewelyn!"
She frowned. It hurt to frown. Was that a callsign? A cell name?
"Wh-" a coughing fit racked her stomach and sent a fresh wave of agony surging through her body. So much so fast that she almost blacked out.
"Please. You're still injured," the voice called Llewelyn said. "Let me go and I can help." That kept her awake. Kept her aware. She gripped the wrist tighter to force the pain away.
"You're hurting me!" And then loosened it. Dropped it.
Vision was slow to return, but Llewelyn was careful to narrate everything they were doing. Not that she could feel any of it through her suit, save for the fleeting moments where his hands grazed exposed skin and she forced herself not to flinch.
When her sight came back it came back fully, barely a hint of blur to her eyes. Llewelyn was a slight man with a bound chest - she could recognize the signs herself after all these years - and sloppily cut hair.
He cringed when she looked at him, though he tried to hide it.
It was...wrong. Something about him, about her surroundings, was wrong. But her mind was foggy and slow and that only spurred frustration that made it slower.
Llewelyn gave her a hesitant smile that she did not return.
"Where am I?"
Shallow breaths kept the pain down, she knew that from experience.
"My husband and I's hut on the edge of the Planasene forest." She stared at him. "About a week's travel from Kirkwall?"
She blinked, and Llewelyn shifted uncomfortably. "Do you...know where Kirkwall is?"
She couldn't... she couldn't think. Just stare at him. Look without really seeing and wait for her brain to catch up and snap everything around her together like a puzzle.
"The Trade Capital of the South?"
Kirkwall? The South? A flood of pain that erupted from her mouth in a choked scream, but she had to sit up. Had to see. The brown was wood, rough hewn wood without a single lightbulb or fleck of plastic. "What…" she swallowed another cry before leaning back against the wall. A few breaths to settle the vomit that beat against the backs of her teeth.
"You really shouldn't be sitting up, you know." The man looked like he wanted to stop her, but didn't really know how. Or maybe he just didn't want to risk losing a hand.
"What planet am I on," she said through grinding teeth, ignoring the man's instructions. It took another minute for her brain to register his silence. His eyes were blank and blinking.
"Planet?"
"Yes, planet." This obviously wasn't a ship, and it wasn't Reach because she could still breathe the air. "World." The word roused a pulse of recognition in his face that would have had her relaxing if it wasn't for everything else.
"Well. I... Thedas, I suppose." Llewelyn shifted again, wringed his hands a bit. "That's as much of the 'world' as I know. Are you... do you know Thedas?"
Thedas. Wrong. That was wrong, but… She growled. Nothing made any fucking sense and her thoughts were too foggy and hobbled to grasp the reason. It...she was pretty sure it wasn't a UNSC colony, not any of the ones left at least.
That thought loosed another streak of adrenaline and something adjacent to fear. She swung her legs - painfully slowly - over the left side of the bed, ignoring Llewelyn's protests and the spots that danced across her vision.
Metal thunked against wood when her feet hit the floor, the spots shrinking even as something wet and warm started trickling down her thigh and flank. She didn't...she couldn't stay here. Knew that, but didn't know why. It - she tried to put weight on her legs and instantly collapsed, palms barely catching her in time - was it hostile? Was... where…
The world span beneath her hands, a swirling mess of brown that threatened her with thoughts of home. It...she didn't like it. The adrenaline faded even while panic rose in her chest. Shallow breaths, she had to keep shallow breaths to stop the pain. A hand swiped across her vision and landed on her bicep - not even big enough to wrap halfway around - and she grasped at it. Missed.
The floor was much closer to her face all of a sudden. How did that happen?
Fuzz crept to the center of her vision while her head lolled to track the voice on her right.
A man. Lithe with a bound chest and...and pointed ears.
She passed out.
Hey all, been a while hasn't it?
Sorry about not writing and publishing for so long, but I'm hoping to change that now with this story and two others I've got in the pipe and ready to publish. I've been wanting to write a DA fic for a while and, well, here we are! This idea just wouldn't let me go, so I had to write it to get it out.
A general apology for the roughness and poor prose of this chapter. I was still getting back into the swing of writing and my style when I was writing this, and my desire to just get it out the door and published probably didn't help things either. But the chapters do get better tho! I've got the first ten written already and they're better, certainly have more going on than this hook and setup chapter. In all departments.
Oh! I'm hoping to do weekly updates for this, so I'll see y'all with the next chapter next Wednesday!