oOo
The Tower was exhausting. Not just physically; I spent the first few floors worrying and stressing constantly about the circumstances that had allowed darkspawn to even be here. At first I wondered whether Loghain had relocated his men and there hadn't been time to tell us, but when I saw the half-dozen faltering guards bearing his insignia, I knew that they must simply have been overwhelmed—but how? There was one way to get into the Tower, and we were using it, and it was presumably the place they had been watching. So how had they gotten past? Had the darkspawn been making a path up the hillside through the forest? Had their numbers grown to a point where they could afford to even do that? And why would they target the Tower, in any case, if only a few dozen men were here? Unless their numbers were even higher than we had thought, and they outnumbered us to a point where they planned a full elimination, dispatching troops simultaneously to all our different locations. With an archdemon, that level of organization was easily possible.
I stopped thinking about it after that, reminding myself that I had barely been here a week myself and that there could be another way into the Tower that, by some unlucky chance, the darkspawn had found. We were hardly searching every room as we tried to get to the upper floors as quickly as possible.
But I'd had to say something when we reached the second floor and the floor was shaking ever so slightly with movement and there was a background hum of rough, inhuman voices... Not to mention that my other sense was itching like mad.
"How come these bastards are even here, blast it?" I hissed. I was mortified a second later when Elissa looked a little surprised at my language. Not offended or repulsed, simply surprised, and that made me feel more embarrassed than anything else could have. I had just cursed in front of an actual lady. I felt my ears going red.
"Sorry," I muttered.
Elissa shrugged, waving a dismissive hand.
"Just one of the guys, remember?" She said flatly as she referred to her response after Daveth had asked her why there weren't more women in the Order.
"But how did they get in here?"
The mage who had managed to survive the earlier massacre of Loghain's men was splattered in blood and his eyes were wide. He wasn't used to being anywhere near his opponents, and the stench of darkspawn had made him go white and shaky like a leaf. I dropped a hand onto his shoulder.
"They probably just found another way in that we don't know about."
Elissa nodded in agreement, and the mage had seemed somewhat reassured.
"You're probably right. Let's just light your beacon as quickly as possible," the mage said, looking wistfully towards the dormitories where he had probably been sleeping the last few nights. We forged ahead, and despite the high number of darkspawn, nobody was seriously injured and Elissa even managed to get a ballista working, pinning more than one creature to the ground for me to take care of.
We arrived at the stairs for the last level actually feeling invigorated. We were going to succeed and light the beacon, and the battle would be won, and this would just be an unfortunate but not insurmountable aberration. Maybe Elissa and I would even get some kind of commendation - and wouldn't that be hilarious? My half-brother having to toast to me, the dirty little bastard secret? They probably wouldn't though, thinking about it. They'd avoid having me near Cailan at all costs.
Then we crested the stairs and I felt my hope plummet. An ogre? An an actual thrice-damned ogre?
My eyes caught Elissa's, she looked wide-eyed and her gauntlets creaked with how tight she was gripping her swords, but she nodded at me.
It seemed horribly unfair that Elissa had spent the better part of the first day in the Wilds facing her first darkspawn, met her first local lunatic, seen two other initiates die before her eyes, survived the Joining and then gone on to be ambushed by a whole host of hurlocks, genlocks and emissaries. And an ogre. Talk about a crash course introduction to the world of being a darkspawn-slaying Grey Warden.
She let me take most of the heat from the ogre, as my shield could just about hold out against a glancing hit. She dodged and dipped away, and I thought she was perhaps too nervous or frightened to engage. Then she grabbed a torch from the wall and threw it into the fireplace to light the beacon before running at the ogre and leaping up to carve two deep rents into its exposed back. The ogre let out a terrible shriek and stumbled forward, bringing its monstrous head down. I lunged at it at the same moment the mage cast a freezing glyph under the monster's feet. Its bright yellow eyes bored into me furiously as it struggled to move. I brought my sword down and got most of the way through the neck.
He stayed upright for a few moments, like some kind of gruesome statue, before the body toppled forward.
"Thank the Maker that's over," I said as I wiped some sweat, blood, and assorted grimy fluids from my forehead. "Good work, everyone." I put my helmet back on and saw that Elissa was clambering over the balustrade to peer out of a broken stained glass window. I followed her; the view only showed half the battlefield, but it was enough to get a gist of how the fight was going.
It did not look good. I watched, waiting with baited breath for Loghain's men to come charging in from the flank as planned, but… nothing. Elissa had left the window and had started to pace a circuit around the room. She was muttering to herself. The mage was collapsed from exhaustion in front of the fire.
"Alistair, I think—" Elissa began, only to be interrupted by a heavy thud against the door.
We moved quickly, but not quickly enough.
I was horrified when I saw Elissa go down, looking more like a pincushion than anything I had seen in a while. Panic and fear flushed through me; the world stood still for a breath and then settled sharp and clear, overriding the horror of failing to protect my fellow Grey Warden and the incessant beat in my head of everything going wrong.
Seeing bright red spray out of the mage's neck, I knew he was beyond help. I rushed towards Elissa, hoping to shield her before the darkness took us, hoping that somebody would come to the rescue if I held out long enough.
The next thing I knew, the uncomfortable buzz of nearby darkspawn was almost non-existent, but Morrigan's charming visage was in my peripheral. I was actually glad to see her again, though of course I would never say that out loud, and she quickly ruined it by casually informing me that we had lost and the King's army as well as all the Grey Wardens had been slain. She watched as I struggled to stand, slipping on the reed mats I'd been lying on, and barred my way into the little hut when I tried to see how Elissa was faring.
The horrible woman also seemed to have an innate talent at quickly discovering what subject areas made you darned uncomfortable.
"I do not think that she would appreciate you seeing her in such a state of undress, Warden."
The condescending, cool words had immediately set my mind off wondering exactly how many items of clothing Elissa Cousland currently had on, before I clamped down on the thought and asked her, using as few insults as possible, the actual extent of the injuries.
"I would think that you… saw for yourself, did you not?"
I had been about to open my mouth to retort that the only reason I had been lying over Elissa when she found us was to protect her with my shield from more arrows, when the infuriating woman glided off into the hut, leaving me there red, stammering, and alone with no real reassurance that I wasn't going to be the only one to make it through this. The trouble was that I didn't even trust Morrigan to be a decent enough person to refrain from teasing if the situation were dire.
After that I was left alone with my grief, and I found myself standing at the edge of the water looking out at the dreary landscape. I was imagining Cailan, the Wardens, Duncan, all of them dying at the hands of darkspawn. I couldn't find it in me anywhere to conjure up tears. There was a scary, numb emptiness that made it hard to feel anything. I asked myself if this was real, if I was going to wake up again in an uncomfortable tent in Ostagar.
When Flemeth appeared beside me, though, I spoke. "How is Elissa? Morrigan wouldn't let me see her."
"She'll be fine, boy," she replied shortly. But in all honesty, she didn't need to say more.
I let the silence eat us up for what seemed like the better part of an hour before I asked her again, just to break the silence. Flemeth didn't get annoyed, she simply replied again: "You will see soon enough, boy."
I couldn't find the energy for one of my usual retorts so we lapsed into silence once more. Flemeth disappeared for a minute or two but then returned, and after I put the armour she had returned to me back on, we stayed in the same place for what must have been at least two hours. Dal woke up and came over to me once, from his guard post outside the hut entrance. I scratched his neck and let him move his head until I was scratching behind his ears, just like I had seen Elissa do. I wasn't sure how he had found his way here; he must have broken out from the kennels. I told him it was good to see him and he whined and butted his head against my leg. "I know, bud. She'll be okay. She'll be alright." I wasn't sure if I was trying to convince the dog or myself.
Eventually, I heard a thump from inside the hut and muffled voices. I was pulled too thin to let myself even hope by then, but something in me still held its breath as I waited. When Elissa emerged, I almost couldn't believe it. She looked perfectly healthy, too, not a limp or even a bad scar or any other deformity. My disbelief escaped my mouth before my exhausted brain could catch up, but luckily Elissa didn't take offense. Or at least, she didn't betray any, though this time it seemed to be because she was too overwhelmed rather than stoically indifferent.
I managed to admit to her how I couldn't believe that it had all happened. At the same time, I was so delirious to see her alive as it sunk in that she was still breathing that I felt the desperate need to pull her to me and feel her heart beating, feel that her skin was still warm. I doubted she would appreciate that so I resisted and managed to get by on the sound of her hushed voice. She looked shaken; her wide eyes made her look very young. I wondered how old she actually was, how many battles she'd actually been in.
I could never have been able to say to her that things were alright, when it was so blatant that things had spectacularly fallen apart. And all it had taken was one man.
Ferelden would fall to this Blight, because Loghain had decided to tear our forces apart. Although Flemeth had ideas, I couldn't wrap my head around how such a man – the Hero of the River Dane, who had featured in childhood stories Ferelden over – could make such a choice.
I'd thought things were hopeless before, when I neared my twentieth summer and the time for taking my Vows came. I realized now that fearing for your own future is nothing compared to the despair that comes with fearing for the future of your country, and those beyond it. As Wardens, it was our duty and our honour to stand between our countrymen and the darkspawn, and now… we were but two. If we stood between them, we would simply die. We were not enough. But what else could we do? Turn our backs on Ferelden, on the duty we swore we would not forsake?
When Elissa began to discuss with Flemeth and I what to do about Loghain, and we started talking about Arl Eamon, I had a euphoric epiphany. Then Elissa and I said at the same time "the treaties!". We had a moment of perfect accord when we looked at each other, our surprise turning into hope. Elissa was nodding her head enthusiastically as I recounted the list of those obligated to aid us during a Blight. As we decided that we would embark on our mission, that terrible hope burned in me. Could we, two lone Wardens, actually accomplish the duty of the whole Order? It wasn't like we lacked the things to try: we had the treaties, the skills needed to travel about in the countryside, and enough supplies and money to get started.
We had nothing to lose, and Duncan wouldn't have wanted us to do any less.
I put up a token protest when Flemeth told Morrigan to come with us, but Elissa was very blunt about the fact that we needed all the help we could get. She asked if I would really rather not have a mage with us, and I had to sigh and admit that she was right.
Life seemed less charming with that shrew around, but now we had a clear purpose. We were actually doing something, something that would avenge Duncan and everyone else at Ostagar, something that would make us –them– feel that their loss wasn't totally in vain.
I'd been quieter than my usual self, I knew. Even people who hadn't known me long could tell. I just couldn't shake the thought that perhaps I could have saved Duncan, had I been there. Taken the hit that would have killed him and given him enough time to get out of there. If only… Duncan and Elissa would have made a natural team. The Warden Commander and a name that carried weight amongst the nobles would have had a far better chance at first recruiting Warden allies and then uniting the Landsmeet against Loghain… But Duncan wasn't here anymore. No amount of wishes would bring him back. All I could do was the best I could. Elissa would get things done, that much I could tell about her. She was a woman of few words and decisive action. If we worked together, we might just be able to give Ferelden a fighting chance.
Still, it was easier said than done. I was aware I needed to buckle up and just get on with things, but it was difficult to stop myself from being broody. From thinking about what could be different, if things had taken a better path.
When Elissa dumped herself next to the camp fire on the last night before reaching Lothering, I was back to wondering what the Maker had done to this girl to make her so far from the pampered noblewoman that should realistically have died to Howe's men. We sat in silence, and I tried to stop staring as she stiffly informed me that she was there if I ever needed to talk about it. She sent one glance my way and then left the subject alone, looking almost as uncomfortable as I felt but allowing me to start a much less strenuous talk of where we should be planning to go first.
If I were a braver man, I would have told her how grateful I was that she was here, that I didn't have to face this alone, but I quailed in the face of such honesty, so I had stuck to complimenting her cooking and telling ridiculous stories, trying to get her to smile more.
Maybe one day, we would be good enough friends I could tell her that, for one thing, she really was a good cook, and for another, she was exactly the kind of person you want to have on your side for this sort of thing.
oOo