I was supposed to put this up two days ago and completely forgot. In my defense, my best friend has covid and I've been trying to keep her company by playing online games with her, which has been eating up most of my free time.
Plummet into the Abyss
Clarel's voice was not imposing. She had no sense of how to modulate it. It didn't ring out across the courtyard, or stir hearts with its conviction. No one cheered as she spoke. "Wardens," she said, and her voice was a sweet lilt threading through the noise of battle, "we are betrayed by the very world we have sworn to protect." The words were simple, honest, and sad - not bolstered by charisma, only by one woman's sense of purpose. "Even so - "
None of the Wardens listening to her interrupted - no, that was Livius Erimond. I knew his aura, and though I couldn't hear the words he spoke - or more likely hissed, the snake - her response was loud enough to float across the space to my ears: "These men and women are giving their lives, Magister. That might mean little in Tevinter, but for the Wardens, it is a sacred duty."
It was unfortunate that the corridor we had come through let out a level above the actual courtyard, and it took us a moment to locate a way down. "Andraste have mercy," Stroud pleaded.
"What's going on?" I demanded.
"Blood magic," Hawke growled - and then the smell of it permeated the air, thick and metallic, and I knew someone had died.
We found the stairs, and hurried down into the courtyard.
This time when Erimond spoke, I could hear him perfectly well: "Stop them! We must complete the ritual!"
I looked out across the courtyard, taking in their Blight-tainted auras. There must have been fifty Wardens there - not really an army per se , but a force large enough to very probably overwhelm my small party. My resolve hardened. Clarel might know nothing of playing to a crowd, but I did. I needed every advantage, and so when I spoke, I used every trick I had ever learned to persuade Clarel's audience to listen. "Sathan - please - Clarel, don't allow this man to use you and the Wardens. Don't hand him your mind - your spirit - the minds and spirits of those under your command. You know - you know - that someone or something else is taking control of them - that they are no longer themselves when the ritual is complete."
"They are sacrificing themselves for the good of the world!" Erimond called back, his voice smug in its triumph. "What they give, they give to fight the Blight and keep the world safe from darkspawn!" He paused, but there was no chance of my catching his expression, not across so vast a distance. "Yes, the ritual requires blood sacrifice. Hate me for that if you must, but do not hate the Wardens for doing their duty!"
Clarel's sweet voice was firm with resolve: "We make the sacrifices no one else will. Our warriors die proudly for a world that will never thank them."
"Strange, that a man who claims to aid the Wardens against the Blight is so enamored with a darkspawn himself," I said, gesturing towards Erimond. "Would you like to share with Clarel what you told me about Corypheus and his false Calling, Magister? What was it you said? That you Venatori would be his god-kings, ruling Thedas, while he oversaw all from the Black City?"
"What - what nonsense," Erimond sputtered. He was a surprisingly bad liar - a fact that no doubt contributed to Clarel's long hesitation.
And she did hesitate - long enough that my lungs began to strain against the breath I held, hoping she would see through him. But no. The magnitude of the mistake she had made was too great, I suspected. She was committed precisely because turning from her path would mean having to grapple with how many terrible sacrifices she had made. "Bring it through," she ordered.
There was a rift in the center of the courtyard, which I had assumed was there to make it easier to summon demons for the mages. It was only at Clarel's words that I realized my own error rivaled Clarel's - in import, if not in terms of culpability. What had I supposed a fear demon such as the one I had been sensing had been doing in this place? Tamely ushering other demons across the Veil for the magister's army?
Of course that wasn't what it was doing - it was waiting its turn to be called into the world. And it - it was the sort of demon that might constitute a small army all on its own. "Fenedhis," I breathed. "Fenedhis lasa'din - I am such a fool."
Hawke stepped forward to stand beside me as I reeled. "Please," she said to the Wardens - a number hadn't moved away from us to follow Clarel's command. "Please - I have seen more than my share of blood magic! It is never worth the cost!"
"I trained half of you myself," Stroud added from just behind my shoulder. "Do not make me kill you to stop this madness!"
"I have no quarrel with the Wardens," I half-sobbed, losing my projection of calm competence entirely. "I've - I've spared as many as I could, hoping - I don't want to kill you, but you're being used. And some of you know it…don't you?"
"The mages who've done the ritual?" one of the Wardens called out instantly, as though he had only been waiting for someone to urge him to speak. "They're not right! They were my friends, but not they're like puppets on a string."
"You cannot let fear sway your mind, Warden Chernoff," Clarel called in response.
"Isn't that precisely what you're doing?" Hawke shot back with a fierce scowl. "You're afraid that you ordered all these brave men and women to die for nothing ."
"For worse than nothing," I added. "To aid a darkspawn in conquering the entire world."
"I honor your bravery, my brothers and sisters," Stroud said, "but this is not the way. You have been tricked."
There was enough uneasy movement that even I could discern it, and Clarel was silent. I thought perhaps she and Erimond were conversing, though I could hear nothing of their words. "Perhaps we could test the truth of these charges, to avoid more bloodshed," she said at last, offering a compromise.
"Oh Creators, he's going to kill her," I muttered.
Apparently I underestimated the degree to which Erimond overestimated his…charm, or persuasiveness, or something. I didn't hear his precise response to Clarel, but then his voice rang out: "My master thought you might come here, Inquisitor! He sent me this to welcome you!" His staff pounded the flagstones as I exchanged a look with Hawke.
"Dragon?" I asked.
"Dragon," she agreed.
"Fucking dragon!" Bull cheered as its uncanny screech ripped through the noise of battle.
"Tiny, there is something seriously wrong with you!" I heard Varric yell as Hawke grabbed hold of my arm, pulling me in some direction that was doubtless better than the place where I had been standing.
The dragon made a pass, its breath igniting a trail of corruption along the stones but not, as far as I could tell, catching anyone - certainly not anyone from my party. We were, after all, already scattering, and the Wardens not caught in Erimond's web appeared to be doing the same. After circling for a moment, it settled on a tower whose bulk I could only see as a vague shadow against the sky - but the tainted dragon's aura was perfectly clear.
All at once, there was a burst of elemental magic that smelled of rain and tingled refreshingly along my skin, cutting through the heavy haze of blood magic that seemed to cling to everything within my perception. At the same time, Erimond cried out.
"I suppose at this point," Hawke said in my ear, "I should just be grateful an archdemon managed to convince Clarel we weren't laying siege to an entire fucking fortress for our own amusement." Her words made it sufficiently clear what had happened: Clarel had at last turned on Erimond. I didn't begrudge Hawke her bitterness.
There was another surge of Clarel's oddly soothing magic - it tasted, somehow, like her voice sounded - and I saw the archdemon briefly light up with it. Clarel was attacking. But then the dragon responded in kind, belching out a blast of fiery corruption in Clarel's direction. There were so many Wardens that I didn't even know whether she had survived until her voice called out: "Help the Inquisitor!"
"Fucking finally!" Sera yelled in response from…somewhere. I couldn't immediately pick her out, but it hardly mattered. The Warden-mages were easy to find due to their already-more-powerful auras laced through with Blight corruption. They were joined by a number of demons, some bound and some slipping through the widening rift - Erimond had directed the mages under his control to open it under Clarel's orders, and he hadn't countermanded the order before apparently abandoning the field while I had been distracted by the archdemon. That meant the enthralled mages were still doing his bidding.
"I'll take care of the mages," I told Hawke. "Concentrate on the demons."
She gave me a fierce grin filled with enough battle lust to make the Iron Bull proud. "I'm here to serve, Inquisitor."
I was glad that it appeared I was the only one whom the fear demon was whispering to - I was desperate to keep it from entering the waking world. To that end, I plucked the Warden-mages from their positions around the rift, dropping them anywhere I thought might keep them occupied. There were a number of fires around the courtyard ignited by the archdemon's attacks, and these were bright enough for me to see fairly clearly. I dropped several mages into the largest infernos, placed several more in Bull's path, drank off a lyrium potion to replenish my mana, and responded to Cassandra calling out to me by finding her within the melee, and giving her a few more mages to cut down.
By that point, the rift had stopped expanding and might, in fact, have been drifting slightly closed without sufficient mages to force it open. I took a breath and looked around, quickly picking out Bull and Varric, and finding Solas immediately after. Sera required only another heartbeat or two, since she was standing not far from Varric. Hawke took a little longer, darting about as she did, appearing as a particularly manic - and menacing - hummingbird. I hadn't observed her fighting style very much, and I found I was grateful that I wasn't responsible for Fade-shifting her on a regular basis. She moved almost as erratically as Cole, but I couldn't see her nearly as well. I didn't even try to pick Stroud out - there were far too many non-mage Wardens, and the taint washed out the other details in their auras to a degree that made it difficult for me to identify individuals.
No one seemed in immediate need of my aid, and so I cast a few attacks at the demons still lingering in the area, until an agonized screech made me look up. The archdemon was circling again. "We have to go!" I yelled. The rift was stable for the moment, and the Wardens could finish up the demons so long as they didn't have a dragon raining fiery death on them from above - I assumed that since Erimond had called it in to "welcome me," it would probably follow me if I left.
Not everyone heard me, of course, though Solas, Varric and Sera formed up around me, waiting for my orders. Cassandra and Bull I plucked from battle as they struck down their enemies, and Hawke as well after a couple of misses. "If anyone sees Stroud, let him know we're moving," I ordered the rest of them. "I can't find him."
"Stroud!" Hawke immediately bellowed - much more loudly than I would have expected given that she was no larger than the average human woman - and then she whistled shrilly for good measure. "Stop playing with demons and help us find Clarel!"
"Do you see him?" I asked her as Solas took my arm.
"In that sea of matching armor? Not a chance," she replied, taking my other arm. "But he'll either hear and follow or he won't." She shrugged.
He heard, and managed to catch us before we exited the courtyard via a flight of stairs along one wall.
The dragon let out another screech as we climbed, apparently tracking us, and belched out a blast of corrupted fire as we gained the top. The area was mostly open - part of the roof of the fortress, perhaps - with large… things at a distance too great for me to make out. All I could see was that they were large and colored in both bronze and the otherwise-uniform grey of the stone that made up the fortress.
"Nowhere to take cover," Bull muttered, confirming my suspicions.
"Demon," I warned them as the bright flare of the creature caught my eye.
"On it," Varric muttered somewhere nearby. Between the darts Varric and Sera shot at it, and the magic Solas and I poured forth, it barely got close enough for Hawke to leap in and deal the killing blow before it dissolved back into the energies of the Fade.
"The arcade," Cassandra said - and then she was beside me, holding onto one of my arms, while Solas took the other.
"We must run," Solas told me.
I had no idea where we were going, but I stumbled along between Solas and Cassandra, tripping often, but, with their help, managing to keep my feet. Or I kept my feet until we were close enough to the arcade for me to make out the shadowed areas between the columns of its colonnade, anyway. That was when my toe caught beneath - something - and I fell too heavily to stop myself, managing to take Solas down with me.
Not for long - he was up again in a flash, he and Cassandra apparently sharing the same thought, both lifting me so that he could get his shoulder under me. Then he ran, his arm around my legs to hold me in place and his shoulder bouncing uncomfortably into my stomach. I had joked, once, about someone throwing me over their shoulder so we could leave Redcliffe more quickly. I hadn't really expected it to happen, and, had I been able to take a full breath, I might have had something to say about the disorienting position I found myself in.
Solas was breathing hard by the time we reached the arcade. Though he lifted me easily enough, running was another matter, especially with my weight so poorly distributed. "I believe I need to train harder," he muttered, panting, as he set me back on my feet. "How is your ankle?"
"Usable," I replied, rubbing my sore midsection and eyeing the wide open arches through which I could see bright sky. My ankle ached, but I could walk, although I didn't know if walking was enough. The archdemon was close, and though the arcade was better than the unobstructed rooftop, it wasn't going to provide much shelter.
Bull's bulk interposed itself between me and what I could see of the view. "Lift her onto my back, Solas. My packs are heavier than she is - I won't have any trouble."
Somewhere nearby, Sera began laughing.
I felt my cheeks heat. "I am not riding into battle on your back like - like a child begging her elder to play halla with her!"
His expression was too far away to read, but his tone was implacable. "It's either on my back or over my shoulder, Boss. Thought you'd prefer the option where you're not hanging upside-down with your ass in the air."
Solas slid in behind me, his hands closing on my waist. "I'm ready," he told Bull, bypassing my approval entirely.
Bull presented his back, bending slightly to compensate for his greater height, and Solas lifted me up, the Qunari catching my legs in his arms. At that point I had to hold on or risk a concussion. I glanced toward the rune that indicated Varric's presence. "As far as whatever book you write about me is concerned, this never happened."
"Don't worry, Inquisitor," Hawke said, sounding as though she, too, was about to break down into laughter, "Varric is an excellent writer. I'm sure he'll make the scene very…heroic."
"Creators, let's just go," I groaned.
"Sure thing, Boss," Bull agreed.
My party jogged down the arcade as the dragon made a pass, trying to hit us with its breath weapon but stymied by the angle. It shrieked in frustration - and then flew straight towards the covered walk, talons scrabbling for a hold on the wrought iron fence topping the parapet right beside me . Bull swore and dodged inward as the metal protested loudly, bending - and ultimately breaking - under the dragon's weight. But the momentary perch gave it enough time to thrust its head into the colonnaded corridor and blast us with its corrupted fire.
Solas's barrier exploded out to meet the threat - a feat I had only seen him perform once before, atop a hill in the Fallow Mire. "Go!" he shouted at Bull, who immediately leapt ahead of the others, carrying me to whatever dubious safety lay beyond the arcade - but the dragon was already falling away from the sheer wall, screeching once again as its wings beat in a laborious effort to regain its lost altitude. It would, of course, succeed - and soon - but we had a moment's respite.
Everyone ran, and I admitted silently that I wouldn't have been able to keep up, and might have gotten us killed.
At the end of the arcade there was another stair, which Bull mounted in two or three leaps, not pausing at the landing but pivoting to leap up the next flight. He waited for half a breath at the top, and I had time to turn my head and see the auras of our companions following a little behind. Then he was off again, dashing along the top of the next tier of walls as the dragon managed to gain our level, swooping past menacingly.
Another flight of stairs, mounted with equal ease, and I caught, distantly, two auras: one Erimond's and one belonging to a Warden.
We were, I thought, nearly at the top of the fortress - only one or two levels seemed to remain above. Ahead, there was a long, probably flat (though I couldn't be certain) stretch of stone. Its terminus was much too far away for me to differentiate from the greyish hills of Blighted sand that surrounded the Abyssal Rift, but I could see the sky and discern that it was probably unobstructed by walls.
There was a blast of fire that smelled chokingly of burning flesh, and then another - both sharing the reek of Erimond's aura, and both aimed at Clarel. Her barrier absorbed them like a lake absorbing a hurled torch, leaving behind barely a ripple in the primal weave. Her aura approached his, and his scurried back until, as we arrived at the edge of their drama, she finally let loose a bolt from her staff. His clattered as it spun away - and I was close enough now to make out the edge of the tower we stood on if I squinted. Bull stopped and let me down.
"You," Clarel gasped. "You've destroyed the Grey Wardens!" The sound of her voice was an open wound - the cry of a dying animal.
Erimond laughed weakly as she circled him, and I wondered what she was doing, placing herself between him and the edge. "You did that to yourself, you stupid bitch."
"Stay here, Boss," Bull rumbled as the rest of our party caught up. He stalked forward slowly, and Hawke followed.
"All I did was dangle a little power before your eyes," Erimond giggled, "and you couldn't wait to get your hands bloody!"
The blast from her staff this time sent him flying back towards us, and I couldn't help wincing as we heard his armor scrape across the stones. Erimond made no attempt to rise, though I couldn't see him clearly enough to discern what he was doing. "You could have served a new god," he whined.
"I will never serve the Blight," Clarel retorted.
I was so enthralled by the events playing out before us that I had lost track of the dragon - until I felt it pass just overhead, and stumbled back a step with a cry. Solas - once again beside me - automatically threw up a barrier at the same time that he placed one arm around my waist, ready to pull me away from trouble.
But the dragon wasn't coming for me - or for any of us.
It landed with a rumble before us and seized Clarel in its jaws - the sound of her bones snapping, audible even over her scream of fear and pain, made that clear. Then the dragon lifted off again, sailing overhead to land…somewhere nearby and slightly above us, on some sort of structure that I couldn't put a name to without being able to see it. It growled and then tossed Clarel's body aside with casual ease.
She was, somehow, still alive, and came to rest not far from where I stood with Solas. The dragon followed, the stench of its Blight-rotted flesh preceding it as it stalked down from its perch. Solas's arm tightened around my waist, and he drew me back, both of us stumbling a little. Around us, I could see the others were retreating similarly.
The dragon paced towards us slowly, ignoring Clarel's broken form - I could feel its gaze trained on us, even if I couldn't see its eyes. I heard her mumbling something, but it was clear she was dying and I wasn't even certain that she was fully conscious.
At least - I wasn't until I realized she was, somehow, weaving together a spell, pulling in the magic released by her own blood and pain. She finished it just as the dragon leapt towards us and over her, catching its vulnerable chest and belly with the full force of her blood-fueled lightning. The dragon shrieked - missed - its head plowing into the stones beneath our feet as it skidded past, falling off the edge and toward the Abyssal Rift.
It was only then, as the great flagstones began to crumble away, that I realized that the ground we had been backed onto was some sort of unfinished bridge or balcony hanging out away from the rest of the fortress, overlooking the Rift itself.
And it was falling.
There were shouts - screams - I tried to scramble backwards, Solas pulling at me, but I couldn't find handholds - couldn't see - I was too slow. I tried to wrench myself free of his grip - tried to shove him away from me - but he was having none of it, clinging to me with a desperation that would have made far more sense if I hadn't been dragging him to his death.
"Let go!" I screamed at him.
"Melavadin," he replied, teeth clenched. "Tel'sal."
There was movement beyond him - a shout. It might have been my name, or my title. The roar of the crumbling stones was overwhelming. I yelled at whoever-it-was to stay back -
And then I was falling. I lost my hold on Solas immediately, tumbling through the air, my hands outstretched uselessly. Distantly, I watched the Anchor on my left hand sparking and just had time to finish thinking it shouldn't be doing that before light ripped through me, tearing me open, and I left the world behind.
Fenedhis lasa'din: In context, "choke on a wolf cock and die."
Melavadin. Tel'sal: Never. Not again.