As the melee near the barricade broke apart into small and disorganised knots of fighting, any man no longer facing a foe made haste to the docks. The shore of the lake was often a secondary battlefield; with fewer enemies and subsequently less defence. On this night, however, the assault of the dead had been less predictable. After the first wave of the attack had been launched against the barricade, a substantial number of the dead had begun to claw their way out of the lake. Many had not survived the fall from the castle battlements intact; skeletal warriors were missing limbs, fleshy cadavers split from throat to belly. Most horrifying of all were their forlorn vestiges of humanity: the shredded apron hanging from the bony pelvis, the boots that had been polished by a careful hand.
Flora found herself on the shore, surrounded by frightened and battle weary men who were drawing from their last reserves of energy. A curious moon had emerged from its diaphanous shroud; lacing the wrinkled surface of the lake with silver. The light was a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it illuminated the field of battle, on the other, it also illuminated the hideous nature of the enemy.
Some distance away on the stony beach stood the sole figure who appeared to be relishing the fight. Silhouetted against the moonlight, the head of Morrigan's staff writhed through the air with serpentine grace; where it streaked, bluish-violet flame followed. At least a dozen corpses lay strewn and smoking on the gravel around her. The witch was breathless with glee; it had been some time since she had flexed her arcane muscle and the enemy proved less challenging than the Darkspawn Morrigan had encountered in the Wilds. Flora's arrival had gone unnoticed; the dark-haired woman was entranced with her own prowess.
Focus!
Flora tore her eyes from Morrigan's conflagration - in equal parts in awe and envious of the witch's skill - and flung her shield around a man stumbling nearby, just in time to stop an ax from embedding itself between his shoulders. The rusted weapon made an incongruous clang as it dropped to the bank, as though the barrier was hewn from solid metal.
Too close! berated Flora's general. Your inattention almost cost a man his life.
Chastened, Flora scoured the shoreline. The fighting was spread more thinly here than it had been at the barricade: the dead crawled onto the shore and were met with blade or repurposed tool. These men were those who had survived the first week of assaults: they possessed some varied skill in combat. Most seemed to be holding their own against the foe, ruined flesh falling in bloodless swathes beneath their furious defence. The shouts of defiance were slowly turning into those of triumph: more men came running down from the barricade to assist in the last dregs of the night's defence.
Then Flora heard a yell drift past on the wind: an exhortation that held a different timbre from the cries of imminent victory that surrounded her. It did not sound triumphant, it sounded terrified; the raw bellow of a man in fear of his life. She spun her head from left to right, eyes sliding over the shuffling figures still locked in combat. None seemed in need of aid - the enemy had dwindled to a ragged few, each surrounded by a knot of envigoured defenders - and then her gaze settled on the far dock.
A lone man cowered at the end of a disused jetty; silhouetted against the dark and silent lake. He was armed only with a fishing rod, which took ineffectual swipes at the approaching dead. One corpse was clawing its way up from the water, while two more edged towards him over the rotten boards. A finger of moonlight painted his terrified face and Flora recognised him as a man with whom she had had a fleeting conversation about fishing nets earlier that evening.
"Bardon!" she shouted, but he was too far to hear her, and she was too far to shield him. The third corpse had almost managed to manoeuvre itself onto the jetty; scrabbling at the wood with fingers of raw bone. "I'm coming," she said then, though no one could hear her but herself.
The shore was damp and gravelled; Flora went slithering down it, pebbles cascading in flurries beneath her feet. The old jetty lay to the east, a thrust of decrepit and algae-slick wood that extended almost twenty yards into the lake. The man fought for control of the fishing rod; his makeshift weapon wrenched from his hands by a fleshy construct. He let out a yell of pain as a blow glanced off his arm; the limb hung useless at his side.
The sight of him standing defenceless spurred Flora on. She gulped in mouthfuls of damp air as she ran, aware that she could not channel her shield if she was breathless. Her focus was so entirely on the man and the corpses that cornered him, that she paid no attention to the admonition of her spirits.
You're within range, her general told her as she reached the edge of the disused dock. You need go no further.
By the time that the warning had unfurled in Flora's mind, she was already several yards up the jetty. The creaking boards had the traction of ice underfoot but she had spent her childhood clambering over the horned, seaweed-slick ridges of the Hag's Teeth. The corpses lurched to face her, tottering on an unstable axis, and Flora summoned her shield in a panic. Instinct had prompted her headlong scuttle to the dock; the spirits' disapproval at her recklessness stung like nettleflesh. She had no idea what to do and so she kept going; ploughing forward into the small crowd of dead. Her barrier cut through the enemy like the prow of a ship, knocking them into the water.
Get back to shore!
The fisherman Bardon gaped at Flora as she came to a halt several yards away, winded from her disorderly run. The wood underfoot protested her clumsy arrival with a sigh.
"Go," she pleaded, flailing an arm towards the shore as the water churned furiously to either side.
He stared at her with such incomprehension that Flora wondered if she had miraculously spoken in a foreign tongue. She repeated her request, aware that the dead would soon manage to claw their way back onto the jetty.
"I'll keep them back. Go!"
Get off the water!
A lash of rain-laced wind blew her hair in her face and she scrabbled it back with trembling fingers. Calenhad, roused by the turmoil in the air, shuddered against the legs of the jetty; sending curls of cold water over the wood. It was not usual for Flora to ignore the warnings of her spirits, but her mind was as agitated as the lake's toothed surface. The fisherman lurched past her, clutching his limp arm. Flora heard a snarl from the morass of shadow at the end of the dock and spun around. A malformed shape was crawling towards her, one leg a stump with the shank bone protruding. She could taste her own terror on her tongue, sharp and metal; more potent than the arcane tang of her magic. Her shield, when it finally materialised around her, had the ragged appearance of a net left out in a storm.
Get —- shore! shrieked her general, but it's voice was chipped to pieces by the chisel of her fear.
Then the world dropped several inches around her as one rotten strut of the jetty subsided; the corroded wood no longer able to bear the weight and rhythm of combat. Flora lost her concentration and her shield in the same instant, the diaphanous veil melting away into the drizzle. A heartbeat later, she felt her coat pulled from her back; clawed fingers snagging in the thick wool. She squirmed away like a worm on the book, tugging her arms free of the wet material as it clung to her.
As the coat dropped away, so did the jetty. The boards gave way beneath her, the rotten legs finally collapsing into mulch. Flora fell several feet into the coal-black water, tangled with the flailing corpses. The cold struck her like a physical blow; her lungs felt as though they had shrivelled away to slivers of prune skin. Air escaped her mouth in a reflexive gasp; only the rising bubbles indicated the direction of the surface.
Yet the change in circumstance did not halt the attack: skeletal fingers slid through Flora's drifting hair in an attempt to gain purchase. Then suddenly her back was burning; the skin aflame in a sharp and shocking pain. Flora realised, with a sour curdling of disbelief on her tongue, that she had been hurt. The water muffled her protest, and she sunk several feet as more air fled her mouth. The moving corpses attempted to claw their way down to her, but their desiccated flesh lacked density. They swarmed in a frenzy overhead, silhouetted against the grey; their guttural howls distorted by the water.
Without warning there was an eruption of heat and brightness above her, as though the sun had decided to blaze for a single, brilliant moment. Disorientated and dizzy, Flora closed her eyes against the warm rush of water against her face. When she opened them again, there was nothing but silence and stillness above her. The wreckage of her attackers floated on the lake surface, contorted into a charred tangle of limbs.
Her chest began to ache and bright spots danced before her eyes; although she had been under the surface of the lake for just over a minute, much of her air had escaped. Then a thrust of something organic parted the floating layer of corpses, and Flora found herself face to face with a tangled knot of blackthorn. She grabbed at it, her fingers finding purchase around the wood and was drawn upwards.
When Flora's face broke the surface moments, the night air felt like a blessing. She gulped it down until her lungs were full, still clutching the end of the extended staff. Drizzle laced her cheeks and pitted the surface of the lake like orange-skin; charred fragments of flesh and bone floated around her.
"Well, well," observed Morrigan, acerbically. "'Tis a funny time to go for a swim: in the middle of battle."
The witch was crouched with nonchalant ease on the splintered remnants of the jetty, her balance unwavering and her expression carefully supercilious. She held the other end of the staff that Flora was clutching; after incinerating the enemy, she had thrust it down into their singed midst.
"You saved me," breathed Flora, sinking several inches as she - overcome with emotion - forgot to kick. "You saved my life."
"Oh, the melodrama," retorted Morrigan, but there was a vein of raw relief in the words."Well, we couldn't leave the fate of Ferelden to that bumbling behemoth alone now, could we? Now, that would be a recipe for disaster."
The bumbling behemoth was a snide reference to Alistair, but Flora had no idea what a behemoth was. Besides, she was still preoccupied by the fact that Flemeth's sharp-tongued daughter had saved her, in spite of the barbed derision that the witch had displayed thus far on their journey.
"Can you get to shore?" Morrigan enquired, reclaiming the length of her staff. "I have no desire to join the… commotion."
For the first time since she had surfaced, Flora looked beyond the dock. The night's assault was over; Redcliffe's defenders were congregating in gleeful knots, voices raised and weapons discarded on the gravel. Two men were hauling the enemy dead into a pile: they would receive no ceremonial pyre, only prompt cremation. The castle overhead had subsided back into a watchful stillness; mercifully quiet once again.
"Yes," she breathed, paddling to keep herself afloat. "Yes, I can. Thank you."
Morrigan gave a nod and - so fleeting that Flora wondered if it had been a trick of the moonlight - a twist of a smile. Then the witch's body promptly collapsed in on itself in a huddle of dark hair, fur and leather; the bone hollowing as it shrunk. A raven escaped the melting mass of shadow, wings beating hard against the drizzle as it climbed. Hair streaming over her face, Flora clung to a remnant of the jetty and watched the bird until it vanished from sight.
Avoiding the clumps of blackened, floating dead - the smell was eerily reminiscent of the roast at dinner - Flora paddled her way towards the shore. Her boots slowed her progress but she made no attempt to remove them, wanting only to get onto dry land and tend to her wound. The flesh between her shoulders throbbed with a dull and meaty ache; nauseated, she wondered if the cut had reached the bone.
How bad is it?
Her general ignored her with cool deliberateness; retaliation for her headlong charge onto the rotten boardwalk. Flora had been warned three times about her precarious footing and each warning she had disregarded. Compassion hummed in shapeless sympathy; too ancient to remember fragments of any mortal tongue.
Am I split along my whole back? Can you see my backbone? Can you see my innards?!
There was no response except a vague ripple of scorn from her general. Before Flora could continue her pleading, her attention was wrenched back to the corporeal world by a familiar voice, though one made brittle with fear.
"Flora! FLORA."
Flora looked up to see Alistair standing in the shallows, one ungloved, urgent hand thrust through the drizzle towards her. His helm lay discarded on the shore, his breastplate hung lopsided from one remaining spaulder. His dead king's face ran greyish beneath the smooth olive of his complexion; the pallor in contrast to the bright, dancing agitation in his eyes. Flora was so relieved to see him that she almost fell over, one boot sinking into the mud. Her brother-warden reached out and gripped her arm; in normal circumstance she would have yelped at the force of his grasp. He hauled her urgently onto the shore and, when her legs went from beneath her, followed her down onto the gravel.
"Flora," he breathed through a throat scraped raw with fear. "Maker's Breath. I thought - I thought that-
Alistair inhaled a deep draw of air, his eyes clenched shut for a long moment; mouth moving silently. His fingers had not left her bare arms; her coat submerged somewhere in the lake behind them.
"Are you… are you hurt?"
The fear had not left him; it ran in a thin vein through each word. He gripped her elbows as though she were still balancing on the remains of the jetty; a heartbeat from plunging into the seething mass of the dead.
"Yes," croaked Flora, too frightened to use her mender's sight on herself in case her back had been flayed open. "I've been maimed. Mangled."
"Maimed?! Where?"
"My shoulders."
Alistair swore under his breath, half-lunging around her. At first glance her back seemed covered in snaking rivulets of blood. To his immense relief, he realised that strands of dark red hair had sought freedom from Flora's lopsided topknot. Pushing them aside, he surveyed the fragments of his sister-warden's vest, and the curve of her narrow back.
"Is my spine sticking out?" Flora asked tremulously, craning her head unsuccessfully to see over her shoulder.
Alistair felt relief crashing over him like an incoming tide. "You've a few small cuts, but they're only shallow."
"Oh." Flora felt a vague sense of embarrassment. "They ain't bad?"
"No, sweetheart."
The relief swept away the last remnants of adrenaline and Alistair rested his forehead against the nape of her neck, exhaling a slow breath. He could feel the throb of her pulse beneath the bare skin. The sounds of celebration from Redcliffe's defenders faded away as though a blanket had been placed over them; all that he wanted to listen to in that moment was the sturdy beat of Flora's heart. He had arrived on the dock just in time to watch the pier collapse underneath her, his startled sister-warden dropping into a swarming mass of corpses.
Soon the clammy flesh of her shoulders reminded him that she was soaked through and it was winter, and nighttime; and although he was relatively certain that Flora could cure pneumonia, he did not want her to expend any extra effort. Raising his head, he curled an arm around her shoulders and searched the area for something warm. Nobody seemed to have noticed them; the defenders were too busy rejoicing in the unexpected extent of their victory. The last mangled remains had been hauled into a pile ready for burning; the smell of celebratory ale drifting past.
"What are you looking for?" Flora asked, shuffling herself within the curve of his elbow until she was facing him. Her nose was running and she rubbed it on the back of her hand.
"Something dry," he said, wishing that he were clad in furs instead of chainmail. "I don't want you to catch a cold."
"Ooh."
It was the only ailment that Flora could not cure: a deliberate limitation imposed by her spirits to deter her from hubris.
Alistair gazed at her face through the drizzle; a rivulet of rain tracing the elegant contour of her cheek. Her eyelashes were stuck together in wet, soot-black clumps; in stark contrast to the light iris they framed.
"You've got water weed in your hair," he heard himself saying faintly, as though recalling words from a dream interrupted.
"Oh," his bedraggled sister-warden replied, cheering up. "Does it look good?"
Alistair embraced her without warning, so sudden and forceful that she lost her breath. It was only the second time that they had held each other without the excuse of a shared pillow and adjacent bedrolls. She felt his relief exhaled hot against her collarbone, his fingers clenching the tattered remnants of her vest; as though at any moment she might slip back beneath the surface of the lake. Although the embrace had been unexpected - it was more of a lunge - Flora reciprocated eagerly; relishing the touch of the living as opposed to the dead. She turned her forehead into the underside of his chin and he kissed the place where her hair met her face, clumsily but with fervour.
"I thought you were going to drown," he said hoarsely into her ear, wishing that he was not still clad in mail. "I thought I had lost you."
"If I drown anywhere, it'll be in the Waking Sea," Flora replied, casting a resentful look over her shoulder at Lake Calenhad, which she did not hold in high regard after their close encounter. "Not in this….. UNSALTED PUDDLE."
A half-laugh escaped Alistair's throat but he did not let her go, reluctant to relinquish his grasp. The prospect of losing his sister-warden had jarred him to tbe bone, the nausea not yet subsided.
Flora was happy to stay in the crook of his mail-clad arm - she was relatively certain that the remnants of her vest were going to fall off when he released her. Shifting her feet from beneath her, she noticed that Alistair was missing a glove and a spaulder; and his breastplate hung lopsided, one buckle wrenched free with such violence that it had broken. Her eyes dropped to tbe gravel nearby, where the discarded glove and spaulder had been unceremoniously dropped.
"You were going to come into the lake?" Flora asked in astonishment, her eyes searching his face as she recalled a past conversation. "But, you can't swim."
"I know," he replied wryly, fingering the dark green weed that dangled near her ear. "I hoped I'd be taller than the water."
AN: Let's grade Flora on her performance in her first proper pitched battle: a solid C- ! I wanted to show how her shielding ability is still pretty amateur at this point: her range is poor and her fear affects the potency of it. If she gets into a situation where she can't breathe, she can't cast at all! She also has a lack of situational awareness in battle, hence the making a stand on a rotten and disused dock - rookie mistake. Luckily Morrigan was there to come to the rescue!
Aww and it feels good to reunite our Wardens again!
Thank you for reading and I hope you're all staying safe and well.
