9:30 Molloris 25
Aeducan Taig, Frostback Deep Roads
Alim had read a fair bit about Orzammar and the subsurface world. Not as much as Jowan, perhaps — he might recognize a word here or there, but he definitely couldn't speak the language, and he was much less informed as to the structure and day-to-day operation of their society. Their history, though, especially the fall of their empire during the First Blight, that he'd read about.
He'd had occasion to imagine what the place would be like. Orzammar had lived up to his expectations, for the most part, and in some ways even exceeded them. Words on a page could communicate the raw physical details of something, what materials it's made out of and its dimensions, but words fell short of the sheer grandeur of what they were describing, the feeling of standing inside such a place, an ant in the halls of giants, feeling the uncounted centuries as a physical presence — seeing the meticulous craftsmanship put into the smallest details, and knowing the same had been applied to every inch on display, the absurd number of working-hours necessary to create and maintain it all, the depth of dedication continuing on generation after generation after generation...
Well, it was impressive, that was all. There simply wasn't anything like Orzammar in all the world...save for perhaps Kal-Sharok, he guessed.
And, of course, when he was young and silly — or, younger and sillier than he was now — he'd read of the dwarves and Wardens venturing out into the Deep Roads, and... Well, the stories were quite exciting. There was a sense of exploration and mystery, none knew what they might find in the depths. Much of it had been lost to time, and scholars on the surface hadn't known much about the world beneath their feet in the first place, there could be anything down there. And dangerous, yes, strange animals not seen on the surface and twisted monstrosities corrupted by the Blight and darkspawn themselves around every corner. The kind of story young boys who had no real understanding of the horrible truth of war ate up like candy.
Alim had actually fought, now, so he better understood how foolish he'd been as a boy daydreaming about being lent out to fight pirates for the Crown or escaping to Orzammar. The actual fighting part could be kind of fun, sometimes...when it wasn't mind-numbingly terrifying or viscerally horrifying. Darkspawn were pretty easy to kill with magic, for the most part, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't get a little bit of a kick out of zipping around frying dozens of them like a badass. A little scary, since they were fucking darkspawn, and sometimes the damned things shot arrows at him, but most of the time they weren't any real threat to him, so it was just a little scary — and since Alim had grown up locked in a tower surrounded by super-powered Chantry militants itching for an excuse to murder him, being a little scared didn't really bother him that much.
Except for when it was just terrifying. The fucking darkspawn templars, for example, Andraste save him, and some of their mages were absurd. That first one in the Wilds that he and Marian had fought had been the worst, he'd been convinced he was about to die for a time there, the ones they'd run into since hadn't been so bad...mostly because they'd all been killed quickly before they could really do anything. Every time they ran into one, Alim still froze up for a second, stomach lurching and skin flaring with unpleasant prickles, but then the things were killed before he had to bother fighting them — that one time even by Lýna, shit, that girl's scary. There would be temporary flares of terror when they were surrounded or arrows were flying, but for the most part it wasn't that bad, most of the time.
And sometimes it was just... Killing darkspawn was fine, but Alim didn't like killing people. He'd had nightmares of those bandits he'd killed on the Highway outside Lothering several times, especially the one he'd only clipped, writhing and choking on his own fluids, ugh, no. And the undead at Redcliffe, just... They hadn't been people anymore, but they'd still been recognizable as such, and the scale of what had been going on there was, just, horrifying. So many people, and...
But mostly, fighting for a living was boring. As exciting or terrifying or horrifying as the actual fighting part could be, that was only a tiny proportion of their time. But it wasn't just a normal boring, it was... Not really having so much to do but wait for a fight, knowing it was coming (though not necessarily when), and not being able to do anything about it, hanging over his head for hours and hours and days... They were preparing for the battle to retake Bónammar, and that was weeks, months away, and it was...
He didn't know what to call it. It wasn't boredom, exactly, nor was it fear. A kind of anticipation, but that wasn't quite the right word either. Something deep and persistent, that colored every moment of every day, inescapable, chatting and playing cards with the recruits or scheming and joking with Jowan or when he was with Lacie or Sola, he could taste it on the air and feel it with every move and every word, but...
A low-level, unwavering sense of impending doom, perhaps? Sounded silly and dramatic putting it like that, but he didn't know what else to call it.
Traveling through the Deep Roads was that kind of not-boring, but more intense than usual.
For all that he'd read of the majesty of the old dwarven empire, there really wasn't much to see. Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised by that — after all, they'd been lost to the encroaching darkspawn more than a thousand years ago, expecting much of anything to still be intact was really quite silly. A shadowy passageway over here he couldn't see shit in, there was a pile of rubble, a few deepstalkers skittering away from the approaching Wardens, oh hey was that— Yes, another pile of rubble! What a surprise, he never would have guessed.
Aiducan Taig was a corpse, long ago picked clean by scavengers, dwarves searching for one relic or another going back centuries, or simply crumbled under the weight of ages. Honestly, Alim was a bit disappointed.
And, of course, it was the Deep Roads, so there were darkspawn around, though they didn't encounter any. They were a constant but distant presence, like a sound just on the edge of hearing, the air still and sharp and... They weren't alone, was the point. Alim was certain he would feel any darkspawn that might come close enough for them to really be a concern, but he still found himself jumping at shadows — fadelight was clear and even and constant in a way firelight simply wasn't, but as they moved, the angle of the light shifting against the rubble all around, an unexpected looming shape or shifting of a shadow would have his heart jumping into his throat, convinced there was something moving over there, they were about to be attacked, but— Oh wait, it's another pile of rubble! How unexpected, didn't see that every day...
It didn't help that there were things down here — the subsurface world had wildlife of a kind, though very different from that of the world above. As the city had long since been abandoned, the natural world had long since invaded. There were mold and mushrooms about, yes — the mushrooms came in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and colors, some of them even glowed, which was kind of pretty (from trace lyrium, supposedly, which meant the mushrooms down here were literally magic) — and while there were plenty of those about, a carpet giving texture to some of the walls around them or stalks sprouting out of the walls or from between paving stones, there were also other plants. The most common, tall and thin, vaguely yellowish stalks with thin, fibrous leaves and some kind of pods growing out of the length here and there, must be kats-grass — a dwarven staple crop, the closest thing they had to wheat. (The texture and the taste were noticeably different, but it was otherwise similar, could be made into bread and beer and everything.) There were patches of it here or there, leaking out of this or that passage to slowly spread across the floor, especially where there were glowing mushrooms, suggesting a greater presence of lyrium...and also that their wheat was also maybe literally magic. Some crawling woody viney things he didn't recognize Jowan said were góltsjir, a kind of tuber...onion...thing, another dwarven crop.
The city would have had farms around it once upon a time, and Alim guessed some of the plants had escaped and gone wild in the thousand years since the area had been abandoned. Which gave the place some color, at least.
And there were animals around, though not really familiar ones. There were these little lizard things, ranging from the length of Alim's thumb to his whole hand — the tiny ones were adorable, honestly, he couldn't blame Lacie and Leliana for cooing over them a little. And they were quick little things, zipping around in a blink, and many of them at least partially camouflaged, when a whole bunch of them darted off all at once almost enough to give Alim the impression the wall was moving.
Deepstalkers, on the other hand, were not adorable — their mouths were just, ugh, nope. The things had a nasty habit of curling into a ball, their coloring and the stiff plates along their backs making them almost indistinguishable from any of the bits of rock sitting around, waiting to spring out at unsuspecting prey, fucking things. They weren't difficult to kill, at least, though a big one almost shrugged off a blast of fire he sent in its direction — because it apparently wasn't just the dwarves down here that had a higher innate resistance to magic — had to strike it directly with lightning to drop it, fucking things...
Léonard claimed part of the reason they always had to have a watch at night was because deepstalkers had a nasty habit of trying to eat people's faces while they slept — as though they hadn't been creepy enough.
There were apparently giant fucking spiders down here too (ugh), though Alim didn't actually see any. He might have heard some...maybe. With the solid stone walls and ceilings, the space enclosed but for the occasional passage leading who knew where, sound down here was really weird. There was what sounded like some chittering and clicking off in the distance every now and then, but that could be anything. It could be the little lizard things, nugs nesting, even an echo of their own footsteps, for all he knew, it really was impossible to tell.
And oh yeah, there were nugs — they grazed on the mushrooms, apparently, whenever they came across a patch of mushrooms the things could be spotted here and there. Alim had seen nugs on the surface a few times — they were more rare above ground, but there were a few small populations around (especially near lands affected by any kind of magic, which was curious) — and these were lighter than the ones he'd seen before, a very pale pink. Which did make sense, he guessed, it wasn't like these ones ever saw the sun. Nugs were gentle creatures, hardly even reacting to their group approaching, not running away like most of the lizards — sometimes tipping up onto their rear legs to watch them pass by, their big black eyes shining green in the fadelight.
They looked harmless, soft and smooth-skinned and without claws or any other defensive stuff at all, but supposedly they could handle themselves just fine out here, even with the predators around. Natí claimed she'd once seen a nug break a deepstalker's neck, gripping it around the middle with its weirdly person-looking hands and then kicking it in the head with its powerful rear legs, which, shit, never would have imagined that, the things looked so harmless...
He didn't even want to think about what the damn giant nugs the Avvar kept were capable of...
Leliana cooed over the nugs too, which was weird. Alim knew some wealthy people kept nugs as pets, but he personally didn't get it — it was the hands, they freaked him out. Completely safe for a little kid to be alone with, less likely to cause even minor harm than a dog or a ferret or a cat or something, but still...
Anyway, all the animals around meant there was movement in his peripheral vision now and then, clacking and clicking against the stone as they moved, the occasional low huff of breath or squeak of a nug or hiss of a deepstalker — distorted by the odd nature of the environment here, hard to identify exactly what he was hearing at times. And with the knowledge that there were darkspawn here, occasionally feeling a few at the edge of his awareness, it was... Well, it was rather nerve-wracking. The back of his neck crawling, magic sizzling in his veins and the taste of copper on his tongue, certain they might be attacked at any moment, jumping at a sound or movement, but then there was nothing, but that didn't actually help him relax at all, because the darkspawn were out there, and...
And, of course, it was also seriously fucking boring, because there wasn't really much to see. Or at least not much interesting — after he'd seen the odd underground plant life a few times and the little lizards and the disgusting creepy deepstalkers, after he'd seen all of it once then that was really it, and... And there wasn't much conversation going on either, because everyone else seemed to be as tense as him — Cennith and Aiden were practically shaking in their boots — an occasional few nervous comments sprouting up here and there before going silent again, everyone just...
It was miserable, was the point. Alim couldn't wait until they were done here and could go back to Last Watch.
At some point in the middle of the day, he'd found himself walking alongside Morrigan. He didn't remember what they'd been talking about, hadn't been paying that much attention to the conversation — he was a little distracted keeping fadelight on their surroundings and jumping at sudden noises or funny shadows, so. It had seemed tense, but Alim had thought the tension was just because, well, everyone was tense down here. Even with as many false starts and silences as there were, when Morrigan slipped away — moving to join Lýna and the foreign Warden officers at the front (Morrigan spent most of the time she wasn't in a library somewhere around Lýna, because they heathen barbarians had to stick together) — it still felt abrupt, Alim frowned at her back as she walked away, confused.
And maybe slightly distracted. It was surprisingly warm and humid underground — he'd expected it to be colder — Alim was using magic to keep himself comfortable, and some of the recruits looked miserable. Morrigan had dressed for the weather, though it really wasn't that much of a difference. She still had the same sash across her chest, but the leather trousers had been swapped for a skirt reaching right around her knees (which was already scandalous by Alamarri standards). Also leather — hunted and skinned and tanned and crafted herself, Alim assumed — and very Chasind, embroidered with beads and with feathers dangling here and there, though it wasn't a continuous piece all the way around, more like a bunch of bands hanging from her waist — thick enough to hide her thighs, but they did flick around as she moved, it was a little eye-drawing. Alim knew she had a loincloth of some kind on under there — she didn't sleep in that thing and, being a heathen barbarian (and, perhaps more to the point, a powerful mage who could fry anyone who tried anything), thought nothing of being seen in various states of undress by whoever might be around at the time — but still, distracting.
Anyway, he still didn't know what was up with that. It'd been nearly two months now since Morrigan had abruptly gone cold on him, and he hadn't managed to figure out why it'd happened. They were still doing their shape-changing-cum-lock-picking lessons — though they were slightly miserable, with Morrigan being all, well, Morrigan about it — so Alim could have asked at some point, but he'd never worked up the nerve. Morrigan could be quite touchy and volatile at times, no matter how much of a I don't give a shit about any of you useless foreigners, nothing you say or do matters to me whatsoever act she put up (and it was an act), he was sure he'd somehow offended her without realizing it — and in retrospect, even in their more civil conversations he'd done that a lot, but he'd always noticed when he said something she took the wrong way and backtracked to explain himself. (Which wasn't so different from talking to most people who hadn't grown up in the Circle, honestly, due to the internal culture there mages could be very blunt, but by this point the recruits were used to him.) He must have missed something, and not backtracking immediately might have given her the impression he'd meant whatever offense he'd given...and having to ask what he'd done wrong, especially after not getting to it for so fucking long, yeah, he had the feeling that'd only make Morrigan more annoyed. Not worth it.
It did bother him a little, though. She was fun, despite (and in part because of) the whole heathen barbarian wilder thing, and he thought they'd been getting along well. He wasn't going to make a big confrontation out of it, but still, a little disappointing.
Of course, what he should have done was ask Lacie immediately.
They were pausing for lunch — they were over halfway to where they'd been told Anvér Dés could be found, Léonard said they should have plenty of time to track him down before the end of the day — not that it was really that much of a meal. They'd had to leave the horse back at the gates, so they'd gone forth with just hardtack and jerky, which they could have munched away at as they walked. The real reason they were stopping was to give their people a moment to rest their legs — as they'd gone deeper into the city, Alim had noticed they were moving steadily up, some streets at an incline and climbing stairs after stairs after stairs. As he sat on oh wow, another pile of rubble! his legs tingled, strain in his muscles he hadn't been entirely aware of releasing as he relaxed, shit, apparently the climb had taken more out of him than he'd realized.
At the thought of how completely wiped out he'd been by the comparatively gentle walk from the Circle to Ostagar, Alim had to smile a little.
He'd only been sitting alone for a minute or two, gnawing at his jerky and uncomfortably shifting in place (the ache in his muscles from all the walking was making it hard to sit still), when he was joined by Lacie. Letting out a sigh as she dropped to a seat, she looked rather more worn out than he felt — after all, she hadn't been out of the Circle quite as long, this was probably still a lot of walking for her. Had definitely built up some strength and endurance since then — she'd been in Redcliffe the whole time they'd been training the new recruits, and had tagged along for a lot of it — but it hadn't been that long, and the only time they'd climbed nearly this far had been the road up to the Gates of Orzammar...which had been rather shallower, and had also had her pretty badly out of breath, he remembered, so.
Honestly, he found Lacie being more fit than she used to be kind of fascinating. Circle life tended to make people pretty soft, but she had muscles now — not a lot, no, not enough it was obviously visible (though the little bit of pudge she'd had before was gone), but he could definitely feel the difference. He hadn't said anything about it, but he found her rather more attractive than he used to...though a big part of that could be because he just had more energy to burn, because of the Joining, or that they were free now, they could do as they liked and there weren't Templars around to stop them. Lacie now being noticeably harder and tighter and...friskier (which was probably because of the being free now thing) definitely contributed, just didn't know what was making the biggest difference.
"You doing all right over there?"
"Yeah, sure," she said, a little breathlessly. "There are too many damn stairs in here. And it's hot, if I weren't using frost magic to keep myself cool I'd be sweating up a storm."
"Yeah, I noticed that. I don't know why it's so warm in here — you'd think, since it's further from the sun, it'd be cooler, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe there's something deep in the earth that's generating heat. It wouldn't even have to be very much, you know, because warm air rises?" Or so Alim had read in books, anyway, the old Tevinter enchantments on the Tower controlled the internal environment too well to notice that kind of thing. Also, tall mountains had ice and snow toward the top, which didn't make much intuitive sense when he thought about it — they were closer to the sun, shouldn't it be hotter up there? Maybe not much of a difference, he had no idea how far away the sun was so he didn't know if being on top of a mountain came up to any significant fraction, but still...
"It could simply be accumulated body heat — there are animals down here, and since the space is contained it doesn't have anywhere to go." Good point. Lacie paused for a second, taking a drink from her wineskin — or, meadskin, why was it called a wineskin even when it didn't have wine in it? Probably some old etymological thing, he was just saying... "Though they are mostly darkspawn by mass, are darkspawn endothermic?"
"...I don't know, actually." His instinct was yes, probably, but it was also possible that they were like possessed corpses, in that they were motivated by Blight magic, and their bodies didn't actually have to work properly to...work. Whatever. The first time he'd actually touched one had been just yesterday — gathering blood to be used to Join the recruits on this trip when they returned to Orzammar (which he was not looking forward to) — and they hadn't seemed especially warm, but he'd also been wearing gloves, he really couldn't say for sure. "I'll ask Gonçalve later."
Lacie nodded, but didn't say anything, occupied with tearing off a strip from a piece of jerky.
Silence lingered for a moment — cut with the echoing noise from the animals of the deep, nervous conversation from the recruits — before Alim decided to, just, say something to fill the air. It was so fucking creepy down here, he needed something to distract himself or it'd start unnerving him again. "How's Jowan been doing? He spent most of the trip so far up by the officers, but I haven't seen him in a bit..."
"Fascinated, of course, bouncing around to look at everything and babbling away like a little boy on Satinalia morning." Alim couldn't quite help a smile because, well, that did sound like Jowan, he'd always liked dwarven shit. "Or he was at first, anyway, the stairs are a little hard on him. Though not as much as they might have been before — Jowan's, ah, filled out a bit, you might have noticed."
Alim snorted — yeah, it'd be kind of hard not to. He'd lost a lot of weight by the time Alim found him in the dungeon at Redcliffe castle — he'd had a hard few days on the road south, and while imprisoned he'd been being fed barely enough to survive (and had then been completely forgotten about for a couple days, after the abomination was killed but before Alim found him) — much of the roundness gone out of his cheeks and the paunch he'd developed over the last several years all but completely vanished. And after that, he'd been training with the other recruits, so he didn't just get fat again. Jowan actually did have visible muscles now, in his legs especially, which was honestly fucking weird.
But that was hardly even worth commenting about, because it was obvious, Alim was more interested in the way it'd been said. "What, I'm not enough for you, looking to screw my best friend too?" Of course, Alim was aware he wasn't enough for Lacie, that she preferred to have a woman or two as well, but it was just a joke.
She turned to give him a crooked smirk. "And why not? I think that sounds like it could be fun, don't you?"
A little surprised huff jumped out of his throat when he put together what she meant. "Yeah, good luck with that." He was all but certain that he and Jowan both had absolutely no interest in men whatsoever, not to mention they'd been best friends for almost as long as he could remember, so that sounded like it'd be just terribly awkward to him.
"You know I'm joking." He'd suspected, sure, but it was hard to tell with Lacie sometimes. "Besides, I'm pretty sure Jowan doesn't like elves. Isn't attracted to elves, obviously, you know what I mean."
Yes, obviously he knew what she meant — he and Jowan had been best friends for almost as long as he could remember, it'd be very strange if he had something against elves in general. "How do you..." If he didn't like elven women, that had never occurred to Alim before. Thinking back on the times they'd talked about girls — which was a fair few number of times, because there wasn't much for boys growing up in the Circle to talk about besides magic and girls — he thought there might actually be something to that. Jowan would agree that one elf or another Alim had brought up was pretty, sure, but he did have eyes — Alim didn't think Jowan had ever waxed poetical (as he had about Lily and a couple other human women over the years) about an elf, not once. So, probably, he guessed. "Huh, I never noticed that."
"I'm not surprised, you can be very dense like that sometimes," Lacie said, her voice curling a little with amusement.
"Yes yes, I'm a tactless ass, I know. Arl Eamon is still bloody furious with me, the glare he gets whenever we're in the same room..."
"You did that on purpose."
"True, it was fun." Also, Eamon Guerrin was an ass, and Alim was a Warden, so he couldn't do shit to him — after having to tip-toe around Templars his whole life, it was very liberating to not have to care. "Though, I'm pretty sure I offended Gwenys and Halrys somehow, and—"
"I don't know about Halrys, but Gwenys took your habitual flirting the wrong way."
"...Oh." Oops. He didn't know what incident Lacie was referring to, but he really couldn't help it. When he noticed an innuendo, or something that could be easily turned into an innuendo, he couldn't just leave it there unsaid — too much time hanging around snarky flirty bastards at the Circle, it was automatic. (Also, he was aware he was kind of a horny little shit, but that was beside the point, he usually didn't actually mean anything by it.) "I'll apologize when we get back to Last Watch. A few of the other recruits just think I'm weird, which is fine, I can live with that, but... Well, I definitely pissed off Morrigan somehow, I still don't know what I did — we used to get on, it was really abrupt, and it's been nearly two months now, she gave me the brush-off just a couple hours ago..."
Lacie let out a long, heavy, exasperated sigh. "Oh Alim, honestly..."
"...What?"
"You're really telling me you have no idea what you did to annoy her? at all?"
"No...?" Alim shrugged. "I assume I said something unintentionally insulting and just didn't notice, she can be surprisingly sensitive..."
Lacie sighed again. "It's really quite obvious, Alim: she's jealous."
"What?" Alim turned a frown on her, but she was completely serious — looking the couple inches up at him with a crooked why are you always like this? sort of expression (very familiar, this was hardly the first time he'd gotten that look for not getting something) — but that couldn't be, it didn't make any damn sense. "Jealous of what?"
"Mm, maybe 'jealous' isn't quite the right word," Lacie mused, voice a little distant, head tilting thoughtfully. "Something in the family, though. And that should be obvious, Alim. You've told me that the two of you were getting on quite well, before. And I do mean getting on, getting on — didn't you say you were pretty sure she was flirting with you?"
"Well, yeah, but we didn't do anything..."
"Might you have eventually, if you hadn't returned from the Circle with two women you happened to be screwing on the regular?"
Alim opened his mouth to answer — well, obviously not, as entertaining as she was Alim had had no intention of starting something with the Chasind wilder hedge witch — but then immediately cut himself off. He'd had no intention of starting anything with her, it'd just been his normal impulsive flirting...but had Morrigan known that? "...Oh."
"There you go."
"I am such a fucking idiot sometimes."
"Uh-huh."
"Honestly, why the hell do you even put up with me?"
"Cute butt."
Alim snorted — more at the flat, casual tone it was said in than the content. "Well, at least I've got that going for me."
"Could be worse."
"Thank the Maker for small favours." He let out a short sigh, one hand running through his hair — or, he started the motion before remembering he'd probably get his hair painfully caught in his glove again, rubbed at his neck instead. "I should probably apologize or something. I guess I was kind of leading her on, in retrospect, I, just, didn't mean to..."
"That would be a good idea. She does plan to stick around through the whole Blight, so."
Her mother had basically ordered her to, and Flemeth always knows, as Morrigan had insisted multiple times, so no matter how much she hated them all she couldn't just leave. "Yeah. Don't know how the fuck I'm going to go about that. I mean, it's been a month and a half, and I never said anything about it, it's going to be painfully awkward..."
"Oh, honestly." Lacie turned to give him a peck on the cheek, then before he could respond popped up on her feet and started walking off...toward where Morrigan was sitting with Lýna, the crazy (possessed?) Sister, and the officers.
Alim hissed, "No, Lacie, wait—" reaching toward her, but she was already too far away, his fingers missed her cloak by a wide margin. He could still chase after her and try to stop her, but she could be stubborn sometimes when she got an idea in her head, the chances he'd actually talk her out of it weren't very good. So instead he just sat there, awkwardly shifting on his pile of rubble, trying not to feel completely humiliated by the thought of his lover walked up to a woman he'd offended and apologizing on his behalf. That was a weird thing to do, Lacie, and also terribly embarrassing.
Lacie approached Morrigan, saying something, Morrigan immediately going tense and hostile in that way she could get. But after a couple seconds she started giving Lacie a confused frown. And then Lacie was plopping down next to her, the tension already starting to go out of Morrigan's shoulders, Lacie managed to surprise a laugh out of her with something. Morrigan threw a couple glances in Alim's direction early in the conversation, but she quickly stopped, and the two of them were just talking instead.
Alim tried not to notice the warmth on his own cheeks. This girl, honestly...
They started up again not long after that, with only a little bit of grumbling from the recruits — nobody was having a good time down here (except perhaps Jowan). They'd only been walking for maybe a half hour at most before Alim began to feel a faint hot-cold tingle, eerie not-music ringing in his ears. Not for the first time, they'd passed close enough to darkspawn for Alim to pick them up now and again over the course of the day, but normally only for a flash, far enough away that they quickly slipped in and out of his range. This feeling lingered longer. He couldn't tell how many there were — Lýna claimed she was starting to be able to, though not with much precision, and she'd only been Joined a couple weeks longer than Alim — but he thought they were above and ahead of them, instead of off to the side, so they were moving toward the darkspawn instead of passing by them.
Which meant there was probably a fight coming up. The thought had a thrill of nervousness running down his spine, but it was still a ways off yet, and besides, he'd gotten through all of their encounters with darkspawn so far, it'd be fine. He was more worried about Lacie, honestly...though she had gotten that good hit on the darkspawn mage yesterday, not bad...
But, as the walk went on and on and on, the darkspawn didn't seem to be getting any closer. Another hour passing down ruined streets and climbing crumbling stairs, and the darkspawn were still at the edge of his awareness — he didn't have that wide of a range, they should have already reached them by now.
...Unless they were traveling in the same direction.
Turning over that thought, Alim had the sudden suspicion that Anvér Dés might be in trouble.
That suspicion became a certainty when they heard fighting ahead — the harsh bellows and screeches of darkspawn, gruff barks of dwarven voices, the clang of metal striking metal. They were in yet another staircase, this one rather more grand than the others, wide and open and made of pale glittering granite, windows overlooking one of the levels they'd passed through below (two levels down, he thought, but it was hard to be sure), an occasional exit onto a balcony with chairs and shit, perhaps for older dwarves to rest on the way up or just for people to gather and talk. At least, Alim could tell it'd been grand once, but now patches of the stone were pitted and crumbling, coated in dust and filth, the only places the embedded quartz glittered through where footsteps had brushed it clean, colonies of mushrooms sprouting out of cracks in the walls here and there. At least one of the balconies was now home to a nug nest — a nug watched them pass standing on its hind legs, tense and still, but apparently decided they weren't a threat, turned and hopped off before they'd all gone by.
According to Gonçalve these were the main stairs to the Upper Galleries — the equivalent of the Diamond Quarter back in Orzammar, where the nobility, the Shaperate, and the most important of the smith and warrior casts had once lived. The area was still the target of occasional expeditions — more often pilgrimages, dwarves visiting the lost homes of their ancestors — despite the city being lost since the First Blight. Well, mostly lost, it'd been briefly resettled after the First Blight (along with the other cities between here and Bonammar), but the population had never grown very large, and they'd all been lost again when the Second Blight came along, so. The most important of the artifacts and documents had been taken with when the city had been evacuated to Orzammar the first time, but there were things they hadn't been able to take with — and the second fall of the city had been more sudden, the survivors fleeing with little more than what they could carry. There were still artifacts here for people to find — particularly equipment too large to move, it wasn't unusual for smiths to come out to make sketches and rubbings of the runes — and they'd only had space for the most important of the documents in the Shaperate and personal libraries, expeditions frequently came back with nothing but old papers.
Which were highly prized, of course, given they were handwritten by honored ancestors long dead, the dwarves considered even such paltry rewards to be worth the sacrifice. Just saying, these expeditions didn't tend to return to Orzammar with literal treasure.
They were partway up the stairs when they began to hear the noise, growing louder and louder as they ascended, the hot-cold simmering of nearby darkspawn growing with each step he took. Anvér Dés was in the Upper Galleries, and he was under attack, Alim was certain of it.
The officers at the front picked up the pace a little bit, before Alim had even begun to hear the battle — either Lýna had that much better hearing than he did, or the senior officers had felt the darkspawn ahead and guessed what was happening. The recruits grumbled a little, but what little protest there'd been had fell into stony silence some minutes later, as they finally approached near enough for the humans to hear the fighting. Some minutes after that, another turn in the stairs, and Alim finally spotted the exit, silver and gold accents lining the threshold tarnished and scored, only a short distance left, glimmering orange light dim against the ceiling far ahead.
From somewhere ahead (couldn't see her from here, too short), Lýna called, "Irina, Alim, Lacie, Morrigan, to the front — strike ahead as we near to get their attention. Shields hold together, wings draw them in."
Alim grimaced a little at the thought of being ordered to go out on his own — he had no idea how many darkspawn there were, or if there were mages or alphas, that could very quickly turn into a terrible idea. But at least he wouldn't be entirely alone, and Irina was very dangerous, it should be fine. As the scraping and clanking of swords and shields and spears being taken to hand rung around them, Alim planted his feet and sucked in a breath, magic rushing over him in a cool tingle, he threw himself forward, his peripheral vision washed away in sharp white and blue light, biting winter wind buffeting him from behind stinging his neck and ears and ruffling his hair. He came out of it an instant later — in the air, the front of the pack a few feet below him, a foot planted against the right-side wall — another breath and he skipped along the Veil a second time right in a row (the chill feeling even harsher), and he landed at the front with the officers, a few steps up. His momentum had him teetering a little, hopping up another stair took care of that.
Not bad, if he did say so himself. He'd been practicing his fade-step ever since that experiment with pulling it off in mid-air back at Ostagar, getting much smoother with it.
The pack had slowed down a little as people prepared for the fight — even Lýna had paused for a second, stringing her bow — they hadn't quite gotten going again yet when a streak of light zipped in straight toward him, a blast of wind slapping against him when Lacie landed just a couple steps away...and immediately tripped on a stair, Alim barely managed to catch her before she fell. Gripping his shoulder, she let out a hissed string of curses. "Trying to land at a stop is hard."
She wasn't wrong about that — a fade-step had some momentum to it, especially when jumping off in mid-air like they'd had to to get over the column of Wardens. "Yeah, I need some more practice too. I think I'm going to jump around the roof of Last Watch a little bit every day before the battle."
Lacie grimaced a little, but nodded. The recruits were ready by this point, so she let go of his shoulder and they continued on, the Tevinter mage in the lead, unwavering green fadelight blooming from her hand.
The stairs finally came to an end, opening up into a wide open space, so large the far edges were lost in shadow. Some sort of market space, Alim thought, though it'd clearly seen better days — as everywhere here, stone had crumbled and metal had rusted, scattered debris here and there so thoroughly broken much of it was unrecognizable as...whatever it'd all been before. Alim noticed the glow of a dense forest of mushrooms in the shadows far ahead, presumably marking the Shaperate (there would have been a higher concentration of lyrium there), but the rest of the buildings looming around were featureless and unidentifiable, the stalls and tables of ancient merchants broken and scattered.
There was a relatively small, squat building in the middle of the floor in the near-distance — that would be a guard post, the market adjacent to the Last Watch had one too. Alim couldn't see if it was even passingly similar, though, since there were kind of a lot of darkspawn in the way.
They didn't charge right away, waiting for the recruits to finish climbing out of the stairs, to put themselves together, Sedwulf, Edolyn, Gailen, Gonçalve, and Léonard at the front, forming a passable shield wall. Hardly broad enough to stop a darkspawn charge of any significant size, true, but they would blunt it, at least. (Especially since darkspawn hardly seemed to put any thought into tactics at all.) Alim glanced nervously between their group and the swarming mass of darkspawn ahead, grimacing at dwarven shouts of determined anger (Orzammar dwarves really hated darkspawn), but thankfully it didn't take too long and they were off, Gonçalve setting a quick pace, the mages keeping ahead. The dwarves themselves had some kind of light, the darkspawn were between them and it, indistinct forms throwing wild shadows, but Irina's fadelight was bright enough that they were slowly illuminated as they approached, showing them what they were dealing with.
What Alim had initially took to be rubble strewn around the building were, in fact the piled bodies of dead darkspawn — and no small number either, but dozens and dozens of them. It looked like the dwarves had retreated to the guard post to prevent getting overwhelmed, and so they could bottleneck the darkspawn at the entrances. It looked like it was going pretty well, too, the darkspawn forced to advance one at a time putting them at a marked disadvantage, the corpses piling up in front of the doors only slowing the attack even further. Even as Alim watched, a genlock tried to drag a freshly-killed body away from the door, and a hulking dwarf in silver and deep green armor sidled out, a heavy swing with a ridiculously oversized axe striking the darkspawn in the shoulder — the thing crumpled, either there was some impressive enchantments on that thing or the dwarf had hit it just that hard — a blow from a darkspawn bounced off the thick armor over the dwarf's shoulder, and he just backhanded the genlock in the face, sending it tripping over another corpse to slam into the nearby wall. The dwarf let out a challenging bellow, retreating back into the doorway as more darkspawn approached.
Just, shit, that was all, Orzammar dwarves were such badasses sometimes.
There were still plenty of darkspawn about, maybe a bit more than fifty, but Alim suspected the dwarves would likely get out of this alive even without their help — it would be a slow, brutal, miserable fight, but Orzammar was kind of used to that. The longer it went on the more likely they were to lose people, though, so Alim was willing to bet Lord Anvér would still appreciate it.
They kept steadily walking for a bit, the tromp of feet behind him and the noise ahead ringing in his ears and his skin sizzling with nerves, the fight looming nearer and nearer. Until, finally, the darkspawn began to glance in their direction, and Lýna called, "Go!" an arrow whizzing off with a near-silent twang — and neatly fixing a genlock at the front through the helmet, because of course, Lýna never missed. (Alim had thought the stories of Dalish archers had been a bit exaggerated, but now he knew they'd actually played it down, this girl was damn scary sometimes.) Alim took a last girding breath, planted his feet, and pushed.
His first fade-step had brought him over halfway to the pack of darkspawn, wheeling around and screeching as more arrows fell on them, Irina landing just a few feet in front of him at more or less the same time. He skipped across the Veil again, this time up and to the right, coming out in mid-air, the world tilting dizzily around him, but he'd meant to do that, the fight arrayed below him, he cast a spirit curse straight down in a long band following the darkspawn crowded around the guard post. He didn't wait to watch it land — he'd be unnervingly close to the ground by then — instead immediately zipping off again, aiming for the roof. His aim was fine, but he was moving downward too fast, his momentum immediately bringing him toppling against the stone, he tucked his arms in and let himself roll a couple times, gritting his teeth against the impacts, forced himself to a stop on his hands and knees.
Oh hey, there were darkspawn on the roof — hacking at the stone with axes and swords, trying to get inside, they wheeled around as Alim and Irina landed. A snap of white light from a spirit curse of some kind split a trio of them apart at the chest (gross), Alim threw off a couple dissolving curses, one-two, three-four-five darkspawn blown apart, popping up to his feet...
The crawling hot-cold tingles of darkspawn on his skin flaring more intense, his stomach clenching, he unthinkingly surged forward in another fade-step, only a few feet, tossing off another curse as he landed, then turning on his heel. There were more darkspawn behind him, but Morrigan had already landed in the middle of them, genlocks collapsing dead or sent flipping off the roof with flicks of her fingers and flashes of green light. The ones not already killed by her opening volley charged, Morrigan squared her shoulders and clenched her fists, dipped a little with a sharp turn, and all the genlocks were liquified from the waist up in a single burst of magic — Alim could easily feel it from here, the air reverberating with a deep thrum, echoing almost dizzyingly in his head, what the fuck — the black spray flung outward in all directions, Alim pushed out to stop himself from being rained on, the thick droplets parting around him, because that was just gross.
A couple more quick spirit curses from Irina and Lacie, who'd landed at some point in the last few seconds (Alim had missed it), and Alim skipped toward the edge of the roof, the opposite side the rest of the Wardens were approaching from, looking over the darkspawn crowding against the wall there — and, his chest stinging unpleasantly from the volume of magic he was channeling, wreathed the front ranks in a dense wall of fire. The heat blasted him in the face, his hair blown back and his eyes stinging, there was a dwarven shout from below he assumed was a curse of some kind, even if he could speak dwarvish he could barely hear it over the roar of the flames and the screams of burning darkspawn.
There was a tingling of magic on the air from Lacie to his left, a wide swirl of her hand, he figured out what she was doing in time to cut off the power to him spell before hers resolved. A heavy weight slammed down toward the darkspawn below, the nearest crushed against the ground and the ones a little further knocked off their feet and tossed bodily backward — and Alim's fire got caught up in it, flames rushing outward to greedily lick over the darkspawn as it passed, more unholy screeches of pain.
There was a heavy twang of crossbows in the near distance, Alim immediately dropped to the roof, yanking Lacie down with him by a hand around her wrist. He waited for a breath, gathering a dense ball of fire in his hand — Lacie did the same an instant later, grimacing (must have landed awkwardly, but bruises were better than crossbow bolts) — pushing himself up to his knees, the sound had come from...that way, the fireballs sailed through the air, Lacie's trailing his by a breath, arcing up before beginning the fall down, down...
Neither of their aim had been perfect — Lacie's was pretty damn good considering she seemingly hadn't known where he was throwing, just using his as a guide — but between the pair of explosions the small pack of archers in the near distance were tossed around and scorched, disoriented. A couple more carefully-aimed spells and they were all very dead.
A second or two later there was a chorus of shouting from below, and lurking, heavily-armored dwarves came charging out of the door — they must have been keeping in cover from the archers. Strangely enough, the dwarves didn't fan out as they stepped over the first row of charred and dead darkspawn, piercing through the group ahead in a column and— "Oh! I get it!" he said as the dwarves began to split their column divided in half to face the darkspawn both left and right. "They're forcing them around to pin against our people. Let's keep them from spreading out, you go left." Alim flew over the heads of the darkspawn to the right, coming out of it a couple feet above the ground, stumbling for a few steps on landing before whirling around, firing off a wide spirit curse at the mass of darkspawn.
The battle from there was very straightforward and uneventful (for Alim, anyway). He forced the nearest darkspawn back with spirit curses and physical barriers, occasionally placing a wall of fire to cut a group off, pinning them against the building. The dwarves pushed them back, back, circling around the building, the line extending outward as more dwarves joined from inside, curling out in a sort of hook, so Alim moved further on, more ahead of their line than alongside it. Morrigan had joined his part of the fight at some point, though she wasn't a great amount of help — she did pick off the few that slipped past his attempts to corral them, but he remembered she'd said she was best with duels, containing a large group like this wasn't her strong suit.
Before too long, what felt like far too quickly, they approached the front side of the building, the Wardens' shield wall in sight — Alim got the feeling Lord Anvér had underestimated their numbers, there was no way they had the people to hold this side. But then, they didn't need to: there was a dense physical barrier cast to both sides of the row of Wardens, forming a wide bowl to catch the darkspawn and prevent the Wardens from being flanked, the only gap in front of the shields, spears and arrows piercing over their shoulders, swords slipped around their sides. Jowan was hanging a bit to the back of the group, hands raised and head bowed, standing stiff but his hands shaking just a little, cleary fighting to hold the barriers.
He was wreathed in a halo of blue-white sparks to Alim's eyes, the air crackling at the edge of hearing — he must have taken a hell of a lyrium dose. Definitely the right move, though, they could easily have been overrun without it. It was kind of impressive Jowan was pulling it off at all, honestly, but he always had been pretty decent with barriers.
As they pressed the darkspawn tighter and tighter, they started pushing against Alim's side in too many numbers to hold back, so he switched to just holding a physical barrier instead, Morrigan cutting down the thin stream slipping through the gap between Alim's and Jowan's. He grimaced at the weight pushing against the barrier, drawing more energy from him, he leaned harder into it, pins and needles sweeping over his skin and his stomach lurching. The line of dwarves kept advancing, Alim slowly creeping to the side, until his and Jowan's barrier met — they'd done something similar on the other side too, he could dimly make out through the translucent walls of blue light, the darkspawn now completely encircled.
A few seconds passed, and then the darkspawn did what Duncan had explained they always did when trapped: they panicked. There was a lot of unholy screeching and flailing, the darkspawn throwing themselves at the barriers and the wall and the shields holding them contained, surging back and forth like the waves against the cliffs under Redcliffe Castle during that one thunderstorm. Alim's ears were ringing with the noise, the screaming and the ringing of metal against metal, he grit his teeth, leaned harder into his barrier spell. And he did have to lean harder into it, the darkspawn throwing themselves against it over and over, the weight even heavier as the dwarves continued to slowly advance, inch by inch, pressing the darkspawn in even tighter. In their panic, Alim noticed the darkspawn were definitely killing their own, their random flailing and leaping bringing their weapons crashing into their fellows — not just going mad and killing each other as Alim had half-expected from Duncan's description, it was clear it was completely incidental — but he only spotted it a couple times before sweat dribbled into his eyes and he couldn't see much at all.
Holding this spell was pretty hard, after all, his skin tingling with pins and needles and his breath burning in his chest, sweat drops tickling him a little. (How damn warm and humid it was down here didn't help.) It wasn't that bad, though, he could definitely hold this long enough for the dwarves to kill all the darkspawn. He considered taking a dose of lyrium, just in case, but the distraction might be enough to lose his grip on the spell, no, just hold on tight, push push push...
The line of dwarves had nearly crossed the entire length of Alim's barrier, nearly freeing him to start tossing spells into the trapped darkspawn, when the wide swath of blue-white light in his peripheral vision suddenly winked out — Jowan's barrier was gone. A hard thrill of fear shooting through him — without Jowan's barrier their people would get surrounded! — Alim reached out, forced his barrier to stretch outward, throwing power into it hard, not thinking it through, he burned, fiery agony crackling through and up his spine and—
And everything went black.
He woke up some indecipherable time later, laid out on his back inside the little guard station. The rest of that evening was kind of hard to remember, delirious from burn-out — that was what that'd been, Alim was familiar with the feeling from taking down the gates at Redcliffe. He suspected that, on waking to find Lacie sitting over him, filthy from rock dust stuck to her skin by sweat and exhausted, he'd said something about her looking terrible, but he'd been kind of out of it, so.
He'd been out of it enough he didn't entirely remember what happened, Lacie had filled him in. Jowan had managed to burn through his double-dose of lyrium and then immediately passed out — he hadn't burned out quite as badly as Alim, he'd woken up first and was just a bit jittery, he'd be fine. He'd just been holding his barrier, but Alim had extended his without really thinking how far, just out. He'd made it far too big, as the plane extended out it'd ground some of the floor tiles into dust and went right through the edge of the pack, jostling the darkspawn and even breaking a few bones and twisting armor from the force, and then out further past where Jowan's barrier had ended (thankfully at an angle to miss the dwarven line coming in from the opposite side), out and out and out, Lacie had been turning to see how far when it'd suddenly winked out. Alim would also be fine, but he'd hurt himself worse than Jowan had — Lacie basically ordered him to keep back for the next few days, which was slightly irritating, but fine.
Thankfully, they'd been close enough to the end of the fight, the darkspawn numbers diminished, that Jowan and Alim both burning out in quick succession hadn't been too big of a problem. There had been injuries, but nobody had died. By the time Alim woke up, at least a couple hours after the end of the skirmish, most everyone else had already been taken care of, the worse injuries healed up by Lacie and Morrigan — neither were excellent healers, but nothing had been so bad they couldn't handle it — the lesser ones bandaged up with some elfroot poultices, everyone would be fine. Mostly, anyway: Lacie suspected Edolyn, Sedwulf, Gailen, Cennith, Aiden, and Natí had all been exposed to the Blight. Whether or not they'd fall ill was still up in the air, some people did manage to fight it off (though nobody had any clue why), but they'd all be being Joined soon anyway, so it hardly mattered.
Hearing Lacie talk about that, even through the post-burn-out haze he'd still managed a moment of panic, frantically reaching for her and— But it was fine, Lacie was certain she hadn't been tainted. She'd kept the convenient rain-repelling trick Marian had taught him up the whole time, even through the healing, just in case. Alim went so weak with relief he nearly passed right out again.
He'd managed to eat and drink a little, Lacie all but pouring water in his mouth — it was very important to keep hydrated after burning out — but he was too damn exhausted to keep his eyes open. It'd been a long day, and he was sore, and very tired. He was only vaguely aware of Lacie curling up next to him before he slipped off into sleep.
(Urthemiel knew the Wardens were gathering in Orzammar. He was watching.)
Holy shit, what's this? Dragon Age fic update? Damn, it's been a while!
Yeah, way back in March I got to when they were approaching the battle and my brain just crapped out, was dead on this fic for ages. I wrote up to partway through the following scene back in September, and just got back to it in the last few days. I'm not liking where the current scene in The Good War was going, so I took a step back, and holy shit, this fic happened, no way. No idea how long this is going to keep up, my writing has been slow and inconsistent lately, we'll have to see.
If you kind of feel like you need to do a reread to catch yourself up, yeah, I know, I'm about to start one myself. Weeeee...
This is the first scene of what was originally a two-scene chapter. It's nearly finished, probably only one good writing day left, but I just crossed 27k words today, so I decided I should split it, so as to not completely kill my poor readers' eyesight. Those of you following TGW should be familiar with that pattern, happens all the damn time, wordy bitch. The next scene is still going to be long, probably passing 20k, but it'd rather not split it up, so I'm just going to leave it — should be posted tomorrow or the next day, hopefully.
Right, enough from me, bye now.