Author's note:
Disclaimer: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition and all related characters and trademarks are property of EA/Bioware. Rated M for language, violence, suggestive, and explicit themes.
I want to thank William, No Tears Only Dreams, and Theodur for taking the time to review the last chapter, as well as all others out there reading and, hopefully, enjoying my story!
This chapter contains the scene that conceived this story at the very start (or, at least, a version thereof), before the rest of it branched out in my mind like hair-thin veins spreading from ink drops on parchment. Accordingly, this chapter's title is derived from that scene.
Where giants (finally) cross swords.
Without further ado, enjoy the twenty fourth chapter of a book written in an age full of heroes.
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In An Age Full Of Heroes
Chapter XXIV
Only Motion
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Iskara shrieked, writhing on the ground. Trying to put out the flames that melted the flesh off his bones. Beyond him, members of the messengers corps ran around and wailed, trying to achieve much the same. But the flames brokered no mercy. One after one, the charred remains of Cauthrien's command cadre slumped slack and dead, flesh frizzling. The air was sweet with the scent of roasted pork.
Less than thirty Men of the Laurel rushed up the hillock to finish what they'd started with the lethality of dwarven ingenuity. More than enough to overcome the survivors of her Gwaren bodyguards without breaking a sweat.
An arrow took the man beside Cauthrien in the throat. He went down with a gurgle. Tugging sharply at the harness holding Summer Sword, the leather straps on her back jerked up and forward, propelling Summer Sword out of its sheath and into Cauthrien's waiting hand.
Like always it felt as if subtle vibrations hummed through the lyrium-invested blade. The bluish hue of the alloy flashed foreign in the sunlight. The sword high over her head, Cauthrien started down the flat hillock with a battlefield-roar welling up. The Gwareners trailing behind her.
Cauthrien knew that the battle had slipped from her grasp, if it had ever been in her grasp to start with. Araris Cousland had outwitted her and Iskara so thoroughly, they didn't even realise it had happened.
Summer Sword flicked in her hand and ripped off the face of a man. Two others crumpled to the ground with deep wounds gleaming black. The pommel of her sword split the cheek of a woman, who staggered back from the impact. Cauthrien punched the tip of her blade through the woman's clavicle, kicked her off Summer Sword's hugging embrace.
The Gwareners at her sides hacked and slashed but one after the other they died, overwhelmed on all sides by Men of the Laurel.
In the distance pillars of smoke rose from the royal encampment. And Cauthrien knew that the forces of the crown had been defeated.
She fought on with a snarl, sending men and women sprawling to the earth.
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After the bone-breaking clash of cavalry, the battle had branched out into dozens of smaller skirmishes around Araris.
The Gwaren lancers had fought them to a standstill. Gathered their wits and put an end to the savage battering they'd taken in the first moments of combat. When the Mortal Swords and the South Reach cavalry had driven into them and slaughtered them in uncountable hundreds.
Araris' longsword bended and screeched through the air. Sliced open the hip of a Gwaren lancer. Araris rode down another man. Sorcerous muttering blared at him. Through the thunder of combat, he picked up the creak of a bow, the release of an arrow. He stirred Kelpie into a forward lurch and ducked down. The arrow whizzed over his head, close enough that the feathered shaft brushed Araris' hair.
The events had unfolded according to his moulding of the circumstances. But the Gwaren lancers defied him. Beyond the disillusion known to men as reason, clutched tight by their hearts, they didn't break from the horrible toll Araris and his men had exacted from them. They rallied! Charged and charged again, bound them in fierce melee of beast and man alike, which cost them far too many lives for Araris to feel comfortable with.
Araris traded blows with a Gwaren knight. Araris gestured. His longsword described an improbable motion. The Gwaren knight stared dumbfounded at the stump of his arm, spurting blood from arteries like the stream of a little boy's piss. Araris chipped his temple, went through the brow, with the tip of his blade and the knight toppled from his saddle.
Beyond the curtains of dust, the din of thousands of men swinging their weapons reached him like the distant rush of a broad river. The moan of screams towered like spectral apparitions hunched over the battlefield. A beautiful hymn resonated in the air, plucking faint recognition from his brain. Though, much like the Gwaren lancers' resistance, its origin defied him at the moment.
The Mortal Swords circled around him, keeping Gwaren lancers from overwhelming pockets of South Reach cavalry wherever they could. Captain Bars, without his horse, one shoulder stooped, and slick with blood running down his side ran through the broad-shouldered woman he'd fenced with. Went down to a knee, to make sure to finish the job, he smashed her face in with one, two, three strikes of the iron rim of his round shield. Looking up, he scanned around, shouted at the Mortal Swords. Stop drifting apart, you fucks! Stay close!
Araris spotted Arl Bryland beset on all side. The ranks of South Reach cavalrymen around him thinning before a troop of fully armoured Gwaren knights. Araris kicked Kelpie into a canter, riding towards the arl.
On his way, Araris picked up a lance stuck in the ground with one hand. Hurled it towards the knot of knights surrounding Leonas and his struggling men. It took a knight through the back of his spine and punched out through his chest. Standing up in his stir-ups, Araris chopped down. Part of a head and shoulder sailed through the air, dragging forking veins of blood in its arcing descent. The Mortal Swords in Araris' wake slammed into the Gwaren knights and cut them to pieces with belligerent proficiency.
Araris rode up to the arl. "Are you hale, Leonas?"
A heavy panting in his voice, the half-Orlesian answered, "Thanks to you, your Lordship."
Araris wiped it away. This was no time for flattery and idle decorum-confined conversation. "We must put the Gwareners to the rout. They're hanging on to their last threads." A lie, but a necessary one.
Leonas cast around as if trying to find what Araris spoke of. Araris penetrated the mask of his face, glimpsed what gathered behind the confines of the flesh. Leonas slowly, but surely, pierced the elaborate veil of illusion. Awakened to the world.
"Rally your men, Leonas. Take the battle to them."
With a tight nod, Arl Bryland had the horns sounded to reform.
Waving with one arm and shouting like a madman, a messenger galloped towards Araris. Not South Reach. Araris narrowed his eyes. Possibilities cycled and clicked. West Hills. One of Wulff's men. The tip of an arrow jutted out of his shoulder, another stuck in his forearm. The messenger reined in at Araris' side. Nearly fell out of his saddle. Araris steadied the man.
"Speak!" commanded Araris, leaving the man no time to catch his breath.
Voice tight with pain, breath labouring. "Arl Wulff requests your assistance, your lordship. The centre is near collapse."
Then it zeroed in, lit up once, like a tissue thrown into fire. The cycling stopped. "Who leads them?" he asked, although he already knew.
"A qunari."
With a nod, Araris sent the messenger away, bidding him to seek immediate treatment for his grievous wounds. Most likely, he wouldn't even make it that far.
Leave them in their hour of desperate need . . . they'll see me leave. They'll crumble. Araris made up his mind. It had to be.
If Arl Bryland and his South Reach cavalry perished, Araris would've to contend with the Gwaren lancers taking the field and harassing his infantry wherever they pleased. Far from ideal. But the loss of the centre would prove far more disastrous in the grand scheme of things.
Araris scanned the sky. The possibility folded open like a flower. At the right moment. He seized the opportunity.
Pitching his voice to traverse the battlefield and amplified by a sliver of sorcerous current, he spoke and his voice rumbled like the crash of waves against breakers through the noise of combat. "Look! Men! You all! Look to the sky! The royal camp! The royal camp burns!"
Men of Gwaren and South Reach turned their heads. In one half despair took root. The other half steeled their hearts, reassured.
Araris ordered the Mortal Swords to rally.
They'd wade into the thick of it.
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It stole her breath. Rend the ground beneath her moot.
The force of solely acknowledging what unfolded before her eyes quivered through her, became tactile, and knocked the breath from her lungs like a battering ram.
Alfstanna disbelieved.
The white-winged laurel abandoned the field! Araris' bound hair flashed golden in the sunlight as he left the men of South Reach to fend for themselves. As he left Leonas behind. With the iron and daffodil yellow figures of Gwaren lancers that reared like monsters in Alfstanna's eye. The Gwareners fought with a ferocity singed by gouts of desperation, the last threads of fading lifeblood still in their bodies, and they clung to it with a fierce grip and something feral in their eyes. Why, how, evaded Alfstanna's comprehension.
"Araris!" She shouted. She accused. She cursed. All with one breath. All with one word. And with all her heart.
Impossibly, he seemed to have heard her. His head turned and their gazes locked for a heartbeat. Alfstanna cast all she could grasp, all that boiled through her, into that gaze. She wanted him to know. There's no turning back from this. Nothing changed in Araris' impassive features.
Araris Cousland averted his gaze and, Mortal Swords in tow, rode off.
Alfstanna found an unfettered howl bubbling up, astonished at the violence of emotion it scraped her throat raw with. The frothing well of passion she had to disentangle from her body, her self, but would not lessen its determined hold over her. She kicked her horse, a keening intensifying in her head. Let an arrow fly into the vague throng of Gwaren lancers. Someone cried out. Gratification swept eerily theroid through her. Another arrow, and another. Alfstanna rained ruin. Men lent their voice to the act of dying that followed. Some couldn't, speech impaired by feathered shafts stuck in throats or eye-sockets.
The Waking Sea knights cut into loose formations of unprepared Gwaren lancers. Horses shied and reared, others bulled through.
All the world erupted.
Lances snapped. Shields cracked.
Like the silent knife at night, they pierced the kidney of the body that was the Gwaren cavalry. Twisted the knife. The Waking Sea knights stabbed and hooked, Alfstanna screamed and shouted with them. Until they had the air of being bloody-lusting creatures, devoid of anything humane, and encrusted in the carved-out and spilt remains of their enemies. Shrieks claimed the skies.
Those Gwareners who wheeled around, frantically seeking escape, Waking Sea knights, astride more rested horses, hunted and quickly rode down.
They put the Gwaren lancers to the rout. Some lucky few managed to flee into the woods with their life intact. The ground was matted in rings of dead horses and men.
Alfstanna called out to Leonas, trying to locate the man. She rode through ranks of wounded South Reach cavalry, uncaring if they thought her compassionate, infatuated with their arl, or simply crazy. She didn't cease her calls.
A knight, cutting the throat of the Gwarener at his feet, pointed her in the general direction where he'd last seen Arl Bryland.
Alfstanna arrived at a circle of knights, kneeling as if in prayer to the Maker. Alfstanna gulped down her fear and slid out of the saddle.
At her approach, the circle of knights parted and revealed Leonas. On the ground. A cloak covered his prone body like a blanket. Stained dark with blood.
The tears came of their own volition. Alfstanna slumped down at his side, searching for his hand, grabbing it. So cold. It drove currents of ice through the veins pulsing in her head. Made her head swim and dotted her vision black with crawling maggots.
The salt of shed tears on her lips.
"Leonas . . . " she croaked. Her voice broke, turned into a sob that squeezed out the anguish of her heart, a wrenching grip fixing her in dull terror. Till it grew too gluttonous and fat, leaving only a hollowed-out shell behind, emptied of something so deeply essential it eluded Alfstanna.
A misty layer clouded Leonas' dark eyes. He looked at her, but seemed to lack focus. He blinked multiple times.
"He'll pay for this," Alfstanna more felt than heard herself growl the vow.
Leonas licked his cracked lips. Voice weak, he breathed, "He?"
"Araris!" Alfstanna snapped. "He abandoned you!"
It took Leonas so much effort that it pained Alfstanna to look. She just wanted him to shut up. Conserve his strength. In a mutter like sails stretching in the wind, he said, "Araris . . . saved me. Saved my . . . men."
Alfstanna clenched her fingers into a white-knuckled fist, eviscerated the urge to slap Leonas back into life and from the Maker's gate. She hated herself for it. Projecting her hatred for Araris on Leonas, on her friend, on her dying friend.
Alfstanna leaned down until their faces were mere finger-widths apart and the coppery scent of his breath rose up to meet her. To trade words with him not meant for everyone's ear to catch.
"How can you say that, Leonas? He left you for dead. He fled."
A sad smile that clawed the breath from her chest. Then a shake of his head, followed by a grimace. "Didn't . . . flee. Gave my m-men . . . hope, w-when I . . . couldn't."
Leonas grabbed her arm and she barely felt it. "Look after my d-daughter . . . will you?"
A garrotte tied its scything line around Alfstanna's throat. She managed a tight nod.
Leonas' fingers left a smear of red as they slipped down.
His eyes lowered to some obscure point, he stared through all material things as if they were merely barriers. His chest stilled and his eyes turned fish-eye dead. His beautiful dark brown eyes, robbed of everything that filled them with beauty.
Alfstanna grabbed at his face, speaking in hushed whispers to him, beseeching, begging. She pounded his chest, trying to beat life back into them. Then tears washed everything away in a haze of blurred shapes and remote meaning. Like the ocean a cliff-side shore, the tears ebbed back and forth over the stone of her mind and, for what seemed like years but were only a few moments, gnawed at her until only a smooth, hollow façade remained.
One of her knights roused her. Limbs flailing in animal hysteria, Alfstanna's eyes snapped open with a start. She'd drowsed off after her men had dragged her away from Leonas' corpse. They tended to their wounded and regrouped, making ready to join the raging battle again.
To the east, behind the epicentre of the arched forest on the Iachus Plains, black towers of smoke twisted into the sky like whirlwinds. The royal camp—burning!—when did that happen?
The immaculate surface of Araris' plan, of his guarded silence during council, manifested in Alfstanna's mind. The dispassionate calculus rearing hoary and bestial behind it. Alfstanna understood. And she hated herself for it. Hated that he'd made the right—the hard choice.
When one didn't know what to expect, by denying them assurances of victory, by denying them explanation of the numerous nuanced paces of his strategy, Araris gifted them with something far more valuable during the course of battle. The unexpected. The victory, albeit small, on the horizon, like an omen prophesying the future. And thus, the sight of the enemy's camp alight and coughing smoke inspired in the Men of the Laurel an even greater fortitude, whilst it whipped the enemy's heart bloody with despair.
With the unexpected sight came the dawning knowledge that they hadn't been led astray and to the slaughter by Araris Cousland.
Look and see where I lead. Witness what I portend! The spine-chilling whisper of his voice snaked ghostly into her ears like a sigh.
But Alfstanna only saw Leonas in her arms. Dead.
Had Araris known this would come to pass, as well? How could he? Had he any reason to? Alfstanna wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. I expect too much of him. I see too much in him. His words, his intellect always blinds me.
Alfstanna got up, limbs shaking with exhaustion. Addressed a Waking Sea knight. "Assemble the men."
"My lady?"
She pointed. "We ride for the royal banner. We cut off the head of these loyalists."
Ser Cauthrien, King's Blade to an illegitimate and false king, would be the target of Alfstanna's pent up anger. Alfstanna would fill the smooth basin that made up her hollow inside with that anger.
Ever searching for relief until smooth turned back to jagged.
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A swath of arrows sailed over Farah'an, plummeted into the shield-raising lines behind her.
Towering over the masses of humans surrounding her, Farah'an glimpsed distant and near patches of the horned forms of her brothers and sisters, hulking above the heads of others like her. Iron flashed, reflecting smudges of light. Blood flew in clots like dirt. Men bawled, screamed, shouted, shrieked, roared, staggered, and died. Nothing else could be seen. Nothing else could be heard.
Only that mannish hymn, sweet as a peach. But even that seemed dimmer than afore.
Farah'an had retreated back into the ranks after the warm up round with the war-hammer wielding boar of a man. She dipped into the murky pools of her strength—preserving her strength for one man. Farah'an intervened only when in her hawkish gaze weakness or the impending breaking of links in the chain blossomed. Sometimes her presence alone sufficed.
The sea of the Men of the Laurel parted. A wedge drove through them and towards the centre of combat, right where Farah'an waited. A many-throated cheer went up, blotting out the clamour of battle.
Farah'an caught sight of the golden-maned tiger around which men parted and carried forward with shouts.
He reached the frontline. Araris Cousland's longsword blinked out of its sheath. Men stepped into his way. It seemed he merely shrugged and gestured and bodies collapsed. Farah'an tracked the graceful movement Araris Cousland's blade described. The Mortal Swords in their blackened chain hauberks arrived behind Araris Cousland, battered into Amaranthines and qunari mercenaries at the front and drove them back with the methodical finesse of career soldiers.
Farah'an watched Araris Cousland. Soon a small circle opened about him. The air reeked of fear. None dared engage the man willingly.
Her eyes appreciated his adolescent-narrow waist, twisting with each move of his weapon. The fine-boned fingers clutching the hilt, not wielding the weapon, but becoming the weapon, an extension of himself. Araris Cousland did not hack or cut, he touched, he brushed, he caressed. With a meticulous precision that one couldn't be trained to achieve. One could only be born with it. Bred for it over generations, like Farah'an.
Finally!
Farah'an unshackled her twin blades from the prison of their identical sheaths and strode towards Araris Cousland, smiling.
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Ingrates denied his path.
Araris appraised them in a steady beat of his heart. Found them wanting. Not yet tempered by the truth of battle. Their mortality not a thing they could grasp. He stripped them of their vanity, exposed them like a nude whore, and showed them the futility of their efforts. Snuffed out the flickering candle of their life with a hiss of his longsword.
The Isala'k studied him. Like nails breaching his skin.
The edge of his blade expressed death. His mind dulled down to pure reflex. Tracking the flex of muscle underneath leather and interlocked rings of mail, Araris assessed possibilities and probabilities, killed futures, killed men, killed entire worlds. He walked the shortest path. Struck the quickest blow. He possessed the endless permutations of battle, made them his own. The men who stepped into his warring circle he controlled, for they entered conditioned ground.
A corner of his mind detached and wandered a trackless steppe. Yavana, sitting cross-legged opposite him in the vastness of the sanctuary called Silent Grove, obese pillars growing like trees from the stone tiles.
They are as a religious sect. Their explicit purpose shrouded in secrecy and rumour, she'd explained.
Fires ranging between sunlight and moonlight flickered through the temple in shadows like otherworldly appearances.
Even from their own people they keep their purpose. And their religion is not turned unto a god or simply the faith of the Qun, the faith of logic. They kneel not before anything mundane. Their religion is war. Their religion is survival. And their way is the way of the sword. The sword that is wielded by the Arishok. The sword that is a shield. His hidden army of barely hundreds that could conquer the known world, would their purpose not forbid it.
The still waters of the circular well, stairs leading down into unfathomable darkness beneath the surface, crumpled in the stir of a breeze. The calm breath of a sleeping Great Dragon, filling out the temple with its gargantuan frame.
They are the Isala'keii. Bred for the sword. To live by the sword. Their entire lives are premeditated by it. They are the sword. And the sword accepts no defeat.
A pause. Yavana seemed to listen to voices only she heard. The whisper of truth in her ear. It was moments such as these Araris thought her claimed by madness of centuries spent alive.
In defeat the Isala'keii see the greatest shame of all. So the Kgatii, the thousand of rank, mark defeat upon their masks. With streaks the colour of blood they number their betters. It is said, that there is an Isala'k with a white mask, the first among them, who has no betters . . . though if this is true, I cannot say with certainty.
The men beyond his circle folded open, like a curtain drawn aside, and spat out the Isala'k, nine red streaks on her alabaster porcelain half-mask.
A moment of stillness. A hush enveloped qunari and men, the masses blurred away into silence.
Then an explosion of fleet motion.
The dance began.
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Thirteen.
Twenty six left.
Some of them struggled. But there were too many.
Some of them begged. But their pleas fell on deaf ears.
Some of them simply sobbed. But they were met only with laughter and insults.
Few of them stayed silent. Accepting their death.
One by one, Amaranthine cavalrymen, under the watchful eye of Naujeri, hauled the men and women under Franderel's command away from their shackled comrades. Kicked them to their knees.
Now it was a West Hill woman's turn, Mirian. Franderel had known her most of his life. Valued her presence. She'd often stood guard outside his bedchamber when he slept or answered missives regarding matters of state.
Mirian bawled, "Bease! No! Beeease!"
With already practised motions two Amaranthines went to work. One held her in an iron grip, the other drove a hunting knife into her belly and began to cut. Intestines were pulled out by hands already black with congealed blood. Tenderly wrapped around her slender throat, and bound to the saddle of a horse. A clap on the animal's backside and it galloped away, dragging behind it blue-faced Mirian, arms bound behind her back, legs kicking frantically, fishing for purchase.
Franderel's pain had dulled. He'd tried to scratch out his own eyes. Nearly succeeded, much to the chagrin of dead-eyed Naujeri, overseeing the grim proceedings with nary a move. Now Amaranthines towered over Franderel, their eyes not straying from his broken form.
They entertained themselves with easy conversation. "Shouldn't we turn back to relieve the King's Blade?" the one on Franderel's left said.
The one on his right spat. "Fuck the King's Blade. We answer to Arl Howe. Not some lowlife farmer cunt."
Leftie chuckled.
Fourteen.
Twenty five left.
Franderel tried again to take his vision. Was beat down for the effort.
Naujeri's shouts over the ringing in his ears, commanding them to stop.
He must witness the magnitude of his failure!
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With a stupid grin on his flat face, the barrel-chested man swiped his daggers at Cauthrien. Summer Sword hummed, flickered left and right and reflected both strikes back. His centre of balance ludicrously lopsided, Cauthrien stepped past the extent of his guard and followed up with the killing blow.
Impossibly, the man weaselled his way out of Summer Sword's reach, a child's innocent laugh on his full lips. The daggers snaked in close again.
Cauthrien re-evaluated her opponent. Lured him into the lull of recognised patterns, meanwhile seeking holes in his defence. Their blades winged and clipped in an elegant yet limited repertoire of moves, dulled into habit and reflexive response.
She watched the sway and shift of his farcical centre of balance. Broke through the pattern. Struck with a blow of Summer Sword's silverite pommel. His nose broke in a gush of blood and the man rolled down the slope of the hillock in a tumble of limbs.
Another took his place, a man, thin as a rail, shouting, "Corks!"
Cauthrien dodged his slash, nicking his kneecap with Summer Sword's tip. He went down in a heap after his comrade, screaming, clutching his bleeding leg.
The stampede of horses at her back. Knowing full well the danger of turning, Cauthrien ventured only a quick glance over her armoured shoulders.
A haggard-looking influx of Gwaren lancers, some guiding saddled but riderless horses. Their approach was framed by hundreds of Waking Sea knights not far behind. Cauthrien spotted Alfstanna Eremon, her face indiscernible in the distance. The Gwaren lancers reined in around her, cut down the Men of the Laurel or simply rode over them, throwing them off the flat hillside.
"King's Blade!" a Gwaren officer shouted at her. "You must abandon the field!"
It struck Cauthrien like a blow in the gut. What she'd known all along, what she'd feared hardened and became concrete reality. Stowing Summer Sword in its harness, Cauthrien swung up in the saddle and spurred her horse into a gallop.
She fled with less than one hundred Gwaren lancers.
At today's dawn, they'd numbered three thousand.
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Their blades licked out and kissed.
They whispered prophesy and sweet promises, rang with iron certainty, its echo final and interminable.
Around them men and women stared in wonder. Some even ceased to fight altogether. Never had they witnessed a sight that could compare. Words couldn't describe. Memory wasn't acute enough to remember in detail.
A flurry of movements flashed through the air. Too fast to follow with the naked eye. Glinting blades narrated perfect geometries of the body, arches flowed like liquid, describing flickering parabolas and intersecting curves that branched out and touched with blinding perfection in a shower of sparks, which travelled like a dusting of stars between the two figures locked in combat.
Araris Cousland and the qunari known by many as Isala'k and, by those few who knew her well, as Farah'an didn't abate their whirlwind of iron. They stayed close, so close it seemed intimate. Like year-long lovers performing a well-known carnal act in front of a lusting audience. The performance of two whores in a brothel. Hard-bitten men wept openly at the beauty of their dance.
Their bodies whipped about in a blur of physical flawlessness that seemed godlike. They didn't part, didn't break contact. They repositioned with immaculate footwork no matter the ground beneath their feat. Mere gestures and manoeuvres transferred into a deadly hissing that metamorphosed into a constant keening noise, which sounded as if death itself walked among them.
They warred. In a plot of feints and counters, slashes and ripostes, dodges and pirouettes, all so complex it beggared the mind. All so quick. So far removed from the men surrounding them, it seemed they stood on another pedestal entirely, unyoked by mortality, the light of the Maker shining through their veins.
They warred a war of their own.
No blood had been spilt. Those around knew, in their heart of hearts, that there'd be no needless blood-letting in the presence of these two. Such base things they struck from reality. If blood was spilt it'd be the end, as sudden as the start.
Abolishing the boundaries of possibility, Araris Cousland and Farah'an carried on and on, a core of surreal calm that contradicted rationality, wrapped in a scintillating sphere of blade movements. Two elemental forces, neither willing to yield. Neither willing to grant the other even the most infinitesimal step.
There was no forward or backward.
Only motion.
Then the braying of a horn.
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Having concluded their masterful portrait in honour of murder in His name, the nine Che'ell brothers sped from the encampment on powerful hind-legs. Ducking low they entered the faint gloom projected by the forest of small trees.
The seventh of the Che'ell brothers sniffed. Recoiled. Caught an abhorrent scent.
Absence Incarnate.
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The bark of hundreds of cattle mabari tied a rope around Anethayín's sheltered mind, lit up in curiosity, and dragged it back up out of the gloomy deeps. It emerged covered in algae and soured by the salt of her tears.
She wiped at her face with the rim of her shirt, brushed away snot from her nose.
Blinking the remnants of tears from her almond-shaped eyes, Anethayín scanned the palisaded encampment of the Men of the Laurel. Everywhere mabari yapped, struggling against their confines. They bared their teeth, growling. Then it turned to pitiful whines as if their masters had raised hands against them.
In the south, the only direction not witnessing any outskirts of battle, dark clouds gathered. A roiling wall of rain and thunder, obscuring everything underneath in curtains of blackish shadow and thick downpour. The storm had arrived out of nowhere, as if conjured by a cadre of Circle magi.
Inhuman horns pealed, flayed the very fabric of the air. Anethayín whimpered. The sky answered with lightening, splitting the horizon with blinding lances of energy, branching out like limber trees.
Shrouded by the cover of clouds, endless masses of Darkspawn loped like canines over the abandoned corn fields covering large rectangular patches of the flatlands. Even as they sped over the ground of the Bannorn, crops wilted to muddy and infertile grey sop.
The nasal whine of Highever horns rose to greet them.
Then the nightmare began.
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