"Get the beacon lit!" Alistair's cheeks were gray with fear even as he ran forward to meet the ogre, sword in hand. Holly bolted toward the beast as well, eyes almost mad, coiling ropes of foam streaming back from her jowls.

Nike's hands seemed to move of their own accord, her mind locked in shock as she continued to stare at the childhood nightmare given form. Arrow set to her string, she let fly at the ogre's face just as Alistair reached it, his sword swinging toward its leg. The arrow sang off of one tusk and she sent another after it, then another.

Holly was darting in and back, snapping at anything she could reach. The ogre seemed confused, swinging first at the dog and then at Alistair. The claws missed the warden but caught on his cape, slicing through it with a faint riiip!

One of her arrows sprouted out of the ogre's thick shoulder but it barely seemed to pay it any mind. Even the ice growing from the wound didn't appear to cause it bother, but Alistair noticed it and shouted at her again, his voice high and breathless.

"The beacon!"

Nearly dropping her bow, Nike gasped and then turned. She had not been able to hear the cracking of the wooden door underneath the roars of dog and ogre, but as she turned the darkspawn outside it hit it again. Splinters of fresh wood bowed inward, and for a moment she saw the dark blade of an axe through them, before it was wrenched back.

She ran for the wall, an iron bracket gashing her hand as she tore one of the lit torches from its sconce. She didn't feel it, a path of blood chasing her as she ran for the huge fireplaces.

The ogre bellowed again, and then something hit her in the back. She felt the muscles twist and knot and her breath caught. She stumbled, dropping the torch and then clumsily lunging after it as it hit the stones in a flash of sparks.

Holly screamed as Nike's hand closed on the torch again and Nike twisted toward the sound, sending a trail of torch flame across her vision. Sparks pattered down, leaving tiny marks as they bounced off her leather armor.

The ogre had Holly in its hand, the dog screaming and biting madly at any part of that hand she could reach. The monster was bleeding from dozens of wounds, the black ichor smearing the floor, but the blood running down its wrist was red.

"Holly!" Nike cried out and tried to get to her feet. Alistair drove in with his sword and speared the ogre through the meat of its thigh and the thing whirled at him furiously. The dog swung upward in its hand and then down as the monster tried to use the mabari as a bludgeon.

Alistair fell back with a frantic jerk, and both fist and dog missed him by inches. Holly managed to get her teeth into the ogre's thumb, but the sound it made was more anger than pain. It flung the mabari outward, and Nike got only a brief look at the twisting and crying dog before she tumbled through one of the open windows and vanished.

"No!" Nike had just found her feet when something hit her in the chest. It clattered to the floor, and by its crude fletching she realized it was a bolt, right as another sprouted out of her thigh.

The darkspawn had broken a large hole in the door. One had wrestled with its fellows to get its crossbow aimed through the gap. Nike stumbled back again, and another bolt sang past her.

She turned and tried to run toward the fireplaces again, but on the third step the leg that had been shot gave up and refused to support her. As she fought to keep upright something hit her in the back again and this time there was pain. It raged up to her shoulders and down her legs with the sudden, startling fury of an explosion. She fell and the whole room seemed to shake, the torch again tumbling away from her fingers. She watched it as it rolled toward the fireplace.

"Nike! Nike!" Alistair was shouting her name and she turned her head. She could see him heading toward her but he was moving strangely. Beyond him something dark and wet lolled on the floor.

A crashing sound- the door. The rest of the wood had given way and now the darkspawn were pouring through. Alistair turned toward them with a motion that seemed to take an Age to complete. Nike looked away and toward the torch.

She got an arm underneath her, then the other one. She pulled herself toward the torch, digging her fingers and toes into the stone. Her back wrenched and flames with teeth sank into her flesh, twisting it. She screamed through clenched teeth then pulled a leg up and shoved herself forward another foot or two. Her fingers fumbled just short of the burning torch. Somewhere behind her, Alistair cried out. Dark seemed to be flowing into the room, blowing on the stormy night air. The light was vanishing. The flame on the torch suddenly curled and then billowed, guttered and then flared.

She heaved, and her fingers closed on it. Something was crashing, something else was shaking. The gibbering, slavering voices of the darkspawn were receding and the dark seemed to envelop everything around her, everything but the torch and the waiting fireplace now only a few feet away.

If she lit the fire, the war would be won.

If she lit the fire, she'd wake up in her own bed back home. Her parents would be there, alive and well. Oren would be there, and Fergus. Holly.

If she lit the fire, everything would be fine.

One more heave. Fighting the pain, she managed to get a foot braced. Reaching out with her free hand she watched it stretch a mile out in front of her. Digging in her fingers, she took a breath and pulled.

A sound of agony and nausea flooded up her throat but she kept it caged behind her teeth. She shoved the torch into the waiting, oil-soaked wood. The spreading orange and gold flame filled her eyes but the shadow that had consumed everything else refused to let the light chase it away.

Then it had her. It could only be the ogre. The pain roared up in her back again, and she could see the fire slipping away from the tips of her fingers and dropping below her, shrinking and dwindling as she rose up, and up.

She thought about that wolf so many years ago, battered and deaf and old. She could see it clearly now, more clearly than the room around her which now seemed as dim and distant as a star.

When the wolf turned toward her it wasn't battered or old any longer. Its pelt melted into the blackness of shadows, and the fire transformed its ancient eyes to liquid gold. She watched the eyes shrink, and fade, and then the wolf was gone.

All of it was gone.

Everything itched. It was as if bugs crawled just under the skin of her face and scalp, and before consciousness truly solidified her hands were at work trying to brush or scratch the bugs away.

"Now, stop that," someone said, and she felt her hand caught. Light and color was starting to bleed back into the world, disorientation following on their coat-tails. She tried to pull her hand away but the one holding it only firmed their grip. "Stop, you are going to hurt yourself."

She focused on the voice, and for a moment the black and gold blur above her seemed almost animalistic-

(the wolf, it's that wolf I saw)

-before her vision gained enough clarity to sort it out.

Nike was laying on a bed, in a small and roughly appointed room. Above her, mobiles and chimes made of glass and small animal bones shifted and twirled lazily. She could smell fresh air, roasted meat, oil, sage, and dust.

The black and gold above her were the hair and eyes of a familiar face, but one she could not immediately place. Where was she? This was not her bed at home.

"What-"

"You are no doubt confused," the face above her said, clearing even more. "I, if you had forgotten, am Morrigan. Your skin is not crawling with bugs, though I know it may feel that way. If I release your hand, please do not claw at your face again. T'would be a poor thank you for patching you up, were you to tear new holes in your skin."

Morrigan. That odd woman in the wilds the men had been convinced was a witch- her mother doubly so. Nike struggled to remember what had happened, even as Morrigan released her hand and she tried to shift herself into a sit. Muscles twitched and burned at her, the greatest pain in the small of her back. She hissed involuntarily against it.

"I am afraid that you will be sore still for some time," Morrigan said, watching her. "We have given you edevas but your wounds were dire. I was not convinced you'd survive the moving, but here you are."

Edevas. That was why she felt like bugs were crawling on her. In large doses, edevas often left an itching, crawling sensation as it manipulated the body into healing.

"What happened?" she asked. "How did I get here? The battle-"

Memory was returning, and with it the image of that ogre. Holly. Alistair. The darkspawn. The fire.

Did I-?

She moved to get up, her back giving another painful wrench. Morrigan caught hold of her and stopped her, firmly but not ungently.

"The battle is well over," she said. "It gives me no pleasure to tell you it was a slaughter. The horde overwhelmed your forces."

Nike stared at her, pale and suddenly dizzy. "The beacon? I didn't light it in time…"

"You lit the beacon," Morrigan said, releasing her hold when Nike made no further move to rise. "However, the armies that were meant to close in and flank the darkspawn quit the field."

"Quit the-" Nike's horror grew. "Teyrn Loghain quit the field? That's impossible! It makes no sense! Why would he-"

"I do not know," Morrigan said with a thin shrug. "I am no strategist, and have no gift at seeing within men's minds. I can only tell you that instead of responding to the beacon as intended, he directed his armies northward."

Nike tried to get her mental and emotional feet back underneath her. "How…do you know that he was meant to move his armies in when the beacon was lit?"

"My mother," Morrigan said simply. "As to how she knows, that would be for her to explain. I have long since stopped asking her most questions. Your beacon was lit, and the commander-Loghain, you named him?- directed his men north."

"The others…Duncan, and the King, and his men-"

"It was a slaughter," Morrigan repeated patiently. "None left upon the field survived."

"C-camp? What about in the camp?" Nike was feeling numb now, even the itching from the edevas fading away.

"The darkspawn fell upon the camp and the entirety of the ruin, once they had broken through. A few survivors might have escaped but I have no knowledge of this. The ruins belong to the horde now."

Nike slumped back into the rough pillow, staring at the chimes hanging from the ceiling but in truth not seeing them. The king, dead. Duncan, dead.

Her brother? Tahja?

She couldn't think, couldn't feel. Were the final remnants of her family, her home, really gone?

"I need to go," she said thickly, and started to sit up again. "I need to search the camp, some might have survived-"

"That would be unwise," Morrigan told her, and with no trace of impatience repeated herself yet again. "The ruins belong to the horde now."

"I have to try!"

"You would die," Morrigan said calmly. "And be no help to anyone."

"How did I get here?" Nike said. Anger moved through the numb shock, and she could hear it in her voice.

"Mother," Morrigan said. "She was able to retrieve you and your companion from the tower, though it was a close thing."

"Your mother," Nike said, staring at her. "Your mother is an old hermit, that room was crawling with darkspawn. How could she possibly-"

"You are free to ask her," Morrigan said. Nike moved to get up, and when Morrigan reached out again to prevent her, she threw her hand off. Her back twisted and burned at her, and she forced herself to ignore it.

For the first time she realized she was wearing a simple cotton shift. Pushing the blanket aside she pulled herself into a sit, but even stubbornness would only go so far. Her back was an agony, and the rest of her was bathing itself in a cold sweat.

"Where are my clothes?"

"It would be unwise to get up now," Morrigan told her, having gotten to her own feet as Nike moved. "You will only faint, and I will have to put you right back in the bed."

Nike wanted to argue, but she feared Morrigan was right. Her whole body felt clammy and shaky, the pain was only a growing fire, and the room was already lurching toward a sluggish tilt.

"Is Alistair all right?" she asked, making no further move to get up but as well, not moving to lay down again.

"He was injured, though not as badly. He is upon his feet, and has been informed of what occurred at the battle. He is taking it about as well as you."

She didn't dare hope, but she had to try. "Holly?"

Morrigan's brows knit faintly. "That was…your dog? I have seen neither hide nor hair of any mabari. Mother did not bring her here as she did you and your companion."

Then, perhaps seeing the look on Nike's face she softly added, "I…I am sorry."

Nike slumped, covering her eyes. The room was spinning now, not just leaning. She said nothing, made no motion to resist as Morrigan carefully maneuvered her back into the bed, gently draping the blanket over her.

"You are in need of further rest. Nap now. I will bring you some food and water when you've woken again."

I can't nap, Nike thought, already drifting away. How could anyone just take a nap in the wake of all of this?

Then she was asleep again, chasing the darkness down to where it didn't hurt, and she didn't have to think.