Ch. 18: In Which There is a Battle
The five of them headed into the city through the gates.
Despite having only been to Denerim twice, Olivia found it surreal to see what had so recently been a busy city instead as a maze of burning buildings and smoke-filled streets down which roamed the occasional group of darkspawn.
As they turned the corner into the market district they found a group of dwarven warriors fighting three- Olivia checked again- yes, three- ogres.
Dashing forward, Olivia hit two of the ogres with an ice spell. The third grabbed one of the dwarves and began to pummel him. Bethany darted in and sliced at the back of one of the ogre's legs with her sword, causing it to drop the dwarf and collapse on one knee, roaring, as Zevran leapt up and stabbed it in the eye. The dwarf looked quite grateful.
Olivia and Alistair took advantage of the other two ogres' incapacitation to kill it while the third began to move again, ice cracking. Morrigan flung a spell at it and the ogre freed from the ice landed on the ground, asleep, where one of the dwarves killed it.
The group headed farther into the city, now accompanied by the dwarves. They found the first of the two darkspawn generals lurking the Chantry, along with a second trio of ogres. Morrigan paralyzed the first of the ogres and transformed into a bear, barreling forward to maul the ogre she had just incapacitated while Olivia froze the second and cast the fade shroud spell. "That looks really creepy," muttered Alistair, looking at Olivia's ghostly form as he stabbed the third ogre in the face. Olivia ignored him and cut the throat of the ogre she had frozen, a glancing blow across her armor from the darkspawn general's axe passing through her intangible body harmlessly while Zevran stabbed the distracted darkspawn in the back.
They headed onward to reach Fort Drakon. In the center of the alienage, they ran into the first sign of living civilians. Shianni stood with a group of other elves in front of the barred gates across the road leading to the Fort, all of them carrying bows and looking worried. Shianni looked extremely glad to see them. "Well you sure have good timing," she said. "There's a large group of darkspawn heading this way and the gates won't hold against it."
Olivia found it ironic that the Establishment's attempts to isolate the elves had made their neighborhood the most defensible area in the city and probably saved their lives while everyone else was overwhelmed by the darkspawn. "Help me hold them off," she said to Shianni, who nodded and shouted commands to the other elves. A thumping noise came from the direction of the gates.
The elves ran up hastily-erected scaffolding that had been set up on either side of the gates, readying their bows and beginning to fire at the ogre attempting to break down the gates and the mob of darkspawn behind it.
Alistair, Zevran, and Bethany stood with the dwarves a little ways back from the gates, weapons ready for when the gates fell, while Olivia and Morrigan each climbed up the scaffolding along with the archers to snipe at the darkspawn, simultaneously freezing and paralyzing the ogre before Olivia conjured a firestorm just beyond the gates, the flames torching the less resilient darkspawn behind the ogre.
The ogre fell before it could smash the gates, but moments after it went down they exploded in fire as the second of the two darkspawn generals appeared, flinging a fireball. Because of course it was a spellcaster. Lightning from the darkspawn's staff arced off the warriors' armor, downing the dwarves in the front row as Olivia sent flying an ice spell that it mostly shrugged off. Morrigan added a bolt of lightning to the attack and Shianni sent an arrow through its eye, felling it.
The group said goodbye to Shianni and the elves as they began to re-barricade the gates, leaving the remaining dwarves behind to bolster the alienage's defenses as they headed across the bridge over the Drakon river, leading to the half of the city containing the fort.
As soon as they had finished crossing the bridge, there was an explosion behind them as the Archdemon swooped down on the bridge, blasting it in half with its fiery breath. "Well," said Olivia. "No way back now."
The trip through the remainder of the city before the nobles' district was pretty uneventful, only running into a few groups of darkspawn stragglers, none of them particularly difficult to defeat. As they entered the district itself, however, they were treated to the sight of a small figure leaping off a tower onto the Archdemon's back as it flew past. "Is that Riordan?" asked Olivia incredulously. The figure did indeed match the silhouette of the Orlesian Warden. Maybe… The figure slipped from the Archdemon's back, falling hundreds of feet to the ground as the Archdemon flew unevenly to land on the top of the fort, one wing seemingly incapacitated.
"Damn. Riodan," muttered Alistair.
"It can't fly anymore," observed Olivia. "If we can just get to the top of the fort it won't be able to get away."
They fought their way to Fort Drakon, meeting up with a small contingent of Dalish in the courtyard just outside the gates who joined them to head up through the fortress.
There were pockets of enemies spread out throughout the building, but most of Fort Drakon was filled with the dead bodies of both its defenders and darkspawn mixed together.
On the top floor of the fort, in the final room before the flat rooftop that the Archdemon had landed on, they came across… Sandal the dwarf, surrounded by the bodies of slain darkspawn. "What." Said Olivia. "How did you even get here?"
"Enchantment!" cried Sandal happily. It may or may not have been an answer.
"No, seriously. We left you in the camp. How could you have possibly made your way through the darkspawn filled city to the top floor of the darkspawn filled fortress into a room filled with dead darkspawn? Were they alive when you got here? Did you kill them or something?"
"Enchantment!"
"I'm never going to find out, am I?" Olivia asked rhetorically.
The five heroes and the contingent of Dalish strode through the door onto the rooftop to the sight of the Archdemon finishing off the few remaining defenders of Fort Drakon. The dragon flung the final one of the men off the edge of the roof and turned to those who had just arrived, roaring, breathing out violet flames.
The Dalish spread out across the rooftop, taking out their bows, and began to shoot at the dragon, everyone spreading out, shooting arrows or spells. Olivia sent an ice spell that froze the Archdemon for- only a couple seconds. Not good. She looked around. Oh. "There are ballistae!" she yelled, heading for the nearest one and aiming it at the Archdemon. Zeveran seemed to realize what she was talking about and ran for the second ballista, firing it, driving the fired spear deep into the Archdemon's side. The dragon leapt into the air, managing to fly a few yards on its tattered wing before coming down and roaring, mouth spewing purple flame on everything in front of it. Olivia shot it with her ballista, skewering a leg. Bethany ran up. "Out of mana. Trade off." Olivia nodded and handed the spear she had been about to load into the ballista to Bethany, stepping to the side and beginning to cast a blizzard spell over the dragon.
After what felt like hours but was really probably only a few minutes of intense fighting, the Archdemon collapsed on the roof, skewered with spears and arrows, breathing heavily. Olivia's face hardened as she drew her sword, running forward and driving it through the Archdemon's skull. The wound erupted in a pillar of light shooting high into the sky. Olivia tried to remove her hands from the sword but found that she couldn't. She was thrown backward, the light exploding around her.
