The Korcari Wilds–9:30 Dragon Age
"Wolves!" shouted Eldred. He cursed, but was grateful that at least the magebane had diffused to such a degree that it was now at an acceptable level within his system. Or at least, such that he could fight. He readied his staff and began–for the third time in his life (the others being the Harrowing and the phylactery chamber)–to work destructive magicks. First he spellbound the rest of his fellows' weapons with fire; following that, he prepared to lay down some of his heaviest artillery.
"Alistair! To the fore! Jory, flank! Daveth, attack their rear with your daggers!" shouted the elf as he froze the first wolf in place. The party did as they were told, not even registering the fact that it was not only an elf, but an elf mage telling them to do so. Nevertheless, when Alistair shield-bashed the frozen wolf such that it shattered, any preconceptions or objections the party might have had suddenly vanished.
Eldred laid down a cone of fire, freezing any wolves that got too close. He threw lightning across the battlefield, exhilarated with the release that came from working combat magicks, letting loose upon the wolves and their reinforcements. And all too soon, they were all dead. Slightly disappointed, but determined not to show it, Eldred straightened against his staff and righted his robes, before, with a practiced quickness, he drew his handkerchief from the folds of his garments and retched loudly into it. Alistair looked back, concerned, but Eldred motioned to him that nothing was wrong, even as the black cloth was stained crimson with his blood.
The party continued onwards, searching for the archive and keeping their eyes peeled for darkspawn. Eldred knew that Alistair was looking at him suspiciously, obviously under the impression that he might be a blood mage; he responded firmly in the negatory, secreting his magebane from his alchemist's pouch and displaying it to the Warden. As expected, he recognized the potion, and with color draining from his face, he mutely nodded his understanding. The elf chuckled softly; to say he was unused to having to explain his condition was putting it mildly. Due to his condition, Irving had spent the first seven years of Eldred's life teaching him the basic curriculum of the Circle, which most apprentices spent the better part of two decades mastering; consequently, he spent the rest of his time prior to the Harrowing studying independently, building up his knowledge of combat magic and getting intimately acquainted with his weaknesses. A side effect of this was that all of the archivists and instructors (and thus, most every apprentice or mage in the Tower) knew of his particular condition. It was an uncomfortable state of celebrity, such that his only real friend over the years had been Jowan; needless to say, he was more than glad to be rid of it.
It was a surprisingly short amount of time before they came across one of the king's missing scout parties; regarding it, Eldred was reminded of a slaughterhouse. The men were quite literally ripped to shreds, blood splattering the landscape and gathering in large, viscous pools of sanguine fluid.
"Over here!" called one man. Wounded, covered in blood and clutching his intestines into his side, the soldier crawled towards the party. Eldred groaned inwardly. Those wounds were nearly beyond his ability to heal, even in the short term; moreover, he was certain that by the end of this day, he'd have more blood in his handkerchief than in him. Nevertheless, he ran over to the man, wretched as he was, lying there prostrate upon the grass-turned-mud. "Who… is that?" the dying soldier asked. "Grey… Wardens…?"
"Well, he's not half as dead as he looks, is he?" asked Alistair glibly.
"My scouting band was attacked by darkspawn!" the soldier cried.
"Evidently," replied Eldred drily, removing the man's hand so as to get a better look. "Please try to refrain from shouting. Your wounds are grave enough; the last thing you need right now is a rupture. Hold still. Alistair, have you got bandages?"
"In my pack," he said.
"Good," noted Eldred. "Take them out and have them on standby; I may lose consciousness here," he ordered. After looking to make sure Alistair obeyed, the elf furrowed his brow in concentration, his hands hovering above the grievous wound as he chanted, the organs returning to their proper positions, layers of muscle, sinew and flesh knitting themselves back together. Once he was finished, the mage fell backwards onto his posterior unceremoniously, then turning over and retching ever more blood onto the already scarlet grass.
Once he regained control over his reaction to using such spells, he spoke. "Your wounds are healed," he began, "but you've been exsanguinated enough that you'll need to get back to camp as soon as possible. Though," he observed wryly, "I suppose you already knew that."
The soldier nodded mutely. "The darkspawn… they came out of the ground… I thought I was going to die like the others! Thank you, ser mage. I've got to return to camp." And with that, he staggered to his feet, limping doubled over back in the direction of Ostagar.
"Did you hear? An entire patrol of seasoned men wiped out by darkspawn!" gasped Jory once the soldier was out of earshot.
"Calm down, Ser Jory. We'll be fine if we're careful," Alistair responded with a tone not unlike the one you would use to calm a horse.
"Those soldiers were careful," Jory went on, unconvinced. "And they were still overwhelmed. How many darkspawn can the four of us slay? A dozen? A hundred? There's an entire army in these forests!"
"There are darkspawn about," replied Alistair, growing visibly more annoyed by the second. "But we're in no danger of running into the bulk of the horde."
"How do you know?" asked Jory petulantly. "I'm not a coward, but this is foolish and reckless. We should go back."
"You sound like a coward to me," commented Eldred. "And besides, you forget. I have magic at my command. Despite my propensity to cough up my own vitae, I am perfectly capable of defending both myself and the party."
"I still do not relish the thought of encountering an army," sulked Jory.
"No one that is in his right mind does; and yet Alistair assures us the army is further from here than we need travel," Eldred observed.
"Know this: all Grey Wardens can sense the darkspawn. Whatever their cunning, I guarantee they won't take us by surprise. That's why I'm here," qualified Alistair.
"Y'see, ser knight? We might die, but we'll be warned about it first!" said Daveth drily.
"That is… reassuring?" uttered Jory uncertainly.
"That doesn't mean I'm here to make this easy, however…" Alistair began.
"Of course not; it wouldn't be much of a test were it easy," observed Eldred. "Anyways, despite your ability to sense darkspawn, Alistair, standing around in a site where darkspawn recently attacked is just asking for trouble. We'd best be off," said the mage, hefting his staff and continuing onwards.
It was not long afterwards when Eldred came upon the flower the kennel master had asked him to procure. Slipping his knife from his pouch, he cut the stem of the plant, secreting it into his robes. Upon using his staff to stand erect once more, he yelped and threw up a wall of fire, incinerating the arrows shot at him by human-sized, twisted creatures that could only be the variety of darkspawn known as the hurlock.
"Daveth! Take your bow and fire at the archers on the ridge! Alistair! Haft your shield and charge up the hill! Jory! Guard his rear and clean up! I'll be casting from here!" ordered Eldred. He snapped his fingers at one of the hurlocks and it snapped frozen. He followed up with a fist of stone that shattered the prone form of the creature. He cursed at the fact that area-of-effect projectile spells were but a little out of his reach; nevertheless, the party responded instantly, firing, bashing and cleaving their way through the creatures as Eldred rained lightning and ice and cones of fire down upon them. And soon, it was all over, the mage breathing heavily. Thankfully, the magebane was finally approaching tolerable levels; he could finally really let loose without retching his own lifeblood.
Taking care to remember why they were there, Eldred tried filling a vial with the blood of the creatures. Trouble was, so many of them were incinerated or had bashed-in skulls from Alistair's shield or were leaking brain matter from Daveth's well-placed shots that the only ones from which he could extract any amount of tainted vitae were the few Jory managed to cleave with his greatsword; further, most of that blood had dissipated into the river to the side of the path that the creatures had fallen into. Only one vial could be filled.
Shortly thereafter, following several fights around the immediate area, the obtaining of a Chasind flatblade, finding an inheritance lockbox for someone named Jogby (and consequently finding said Jogby's corpse facedown in a pool of his own sanguine bile) and deciding to return it to Redcliffe at the first opportunity and filling the vials, the party caught sight of a bridge; and upon that bridge, there was what Eldred supposed could only be a hurlock emissary.
"Daveth! Use your fire arrows to pick off the hurlocks flanking the caster! Do NOT run past it; it's most certainly trapped! Jory, run through there on my mark! Alistair, standby!" the elf shouted as he raised his hands. An almost manic grin overtook his face; this emissary was in for a surprise. The hurlock emissary launched a mind-affecting horror spell at Jory–a risky prospect at best–as its first attack…
…and consequently took a fireball directly to his face, leaving behind only a smoldering pile of grime-ridden robes.
"JORY! NOW!" shouted Eldred. With a mighty shout, Jory charged heedlessly through the bridge, trap after trap latching onto him; after slicing apart two hurlock archers, he fainted of exsanguination. But the mage's plan worked; Jory's charge had set off all of the traps, such that even the genlock rogues in hiding fell upon him.
"Alistair! Sally forth! Daveth! Time to show us how well you use those daggers!" ordered Eldred, tossing a bolt of lightning with a flick of his wrist. Alistair charged forward like a destrier, shield up and sword ready, plowing through the darkspawn that had fallen upon the Redcliffe knight, while Daveth freed his daggers, running and leaping to plunge both daggers into the back of a particular hurlock, sheets of blood gushing from the long, thin slash/stab wounds to create an effect not unlike a veil. He threw another dagger directly into the throat of a sword-wielding hurlock, slicing its esophagus and causing blood first to gush, then to gurgle, from the wound in its neck.
… As for Eldred, he seemed to his fellows to be preoccupied with turning the battlefield into nothing more than a series of smoking craters. Fireballs came flying into the melee whenever he could cast them, accompanied by stone fists and lightning bolts. One by one he also froze solid whichever hurlock was closest to his two active fellows, such that by piercing them they might shatter, especially considering the flame enchantment that was still present upon their blades.
When all the darkspawn were reduced to quivering slices of desiccated flesh or charred bits strewn across the field, they continued onwards towards their final goal. And so did they come upon the one type of darkspawn that Eldred had hoped not to encounter, out of all the varieties about which he'd read. Thankfully, Alistair, Daveth and the now-revived Jory quickly put the greatsword-wielding hurlock alpha into dire straits. Eldred occupied himself with incinerating, freezing, electrocuting and pulverizing the other hurlocks and genlocks on the field. Then, once they were all either reduced to smoking ruins, icy shards or limpid pools, the mage finished off the alpha with a carefully-aimed, expertly-timed fireball, which through his fellows off their feet with the force of its detonation. Quickly they regained their footing, only to see that the threat had been dealt with.
Eldred approached the ruins of the archive, his party members running to catch up, his staff thumping against the ground as he came upon earth that had been pounded into solidity by travel and the passage of time. He walked into the skeletal tower, bending over. Something was wrong, however; the chest was broken, the treaties, gone. The elf searched viciously through the remains of the trunk for the scrolls; if Duncan's tone was any indication, those treaties were paramount.
"Well, well. What have we here?" asked a female voice, beautiful, sensual, seductive, with a tenor like velvet. Eldred cocked his head; then, catching her out of the corner of his eye, he turned slowly about as she began to walk down the ramp behind him continuing as she walked with a not-so-subtle, but doubtlessly natural, seduction in each step. "Are you a vulture, I wonder? A scavenger amidst a corpse whose bones were long since cleaned?"
Eldred caught her fully in sight. She was, quite frankly, the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes upon, his heart aching in faint recognition as he remained firmly entranced by her lithe, natural feline gait.
"Or merely an intruder," she continued, her voice lowering dangerously. "Come into these darkspawn-filled wilds of mine in search of easy prey?" Her strange golden eagle-eyes narrowed as she regarded the party with suspicion, magic staff upon her back.
"What say you, hmm? Scavenger or intruder?" she asked, stopping in front of him with her hand on her hip in a suggestive pose. Eldred, though transfixed by her untamed beauty, was automatically on his guard; a misspoken word here might just be his last. He reminded himself to tread lightly and cautiously here. Deciding her too intelligent to warrant being lied to or evaded–that would be quite disrespectful of what he instinctually knew was quite the remarkable woman–he opted for the truth.
"I am neither. The Grey Wardens once owned this tower, but it has evidently since fallen into disrepair," he stated.
"Indeed; 'tis a tower no longer," she scoffed. "The Wilds have, in truth, reclaimed this desiccated corpse. "I have watched your progress for some time," she stated, walking again, this time past the party. "'Where do they go?' I wondered. 'Why are they here?'" She stepped up onto the ledge of the ruin, overlooking the rest of their path.
"And now you disturb ashes that none have touched for so long. Why is that?" she questioned, pivoting to regard the assembled men and elf.
"Don't answer her," warned Alistair in a low voice. "She looks Chasind, and that means that others may be nearby," he said warily.
"You fear barbarians will swoop down upon you?" she mocked, miming the motion of a bird's wings.
"Yes," Alistair said thoughtfully, in a tone almost akin to an epiphany of a particular sort. "Swooping is bad."
"She's a Witch of the Wilds, she is!" exclaimed Daveth. "She'll turn us into toads!"
"Witch of the Wilds?" the woman asked slowly, sounding almost incredulous. "Such idle fancies, those legends. Have you no minds of your own?" she tisked. She turned to regard the black-robed Eldred once more. "You there," she addressed. "Elves are not frightened little boys. Tell me your name, and I shall tell you mine. Let us be civilized."
"I, m'lady," began the mage, bowing slightly, "am the one called Eldred. It is truly a great pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"Now that is a proper civil greeting," she remarked, sounding flattered. "Even here in the Wilds. You may call me Morrigan."
Morrigan.
THAT was the name that had haunted his dreams since his dreams began, from whence he recognized her voluptuous yet toned physique, her feline grace, the sexuality that pronounced her every step, underscoring and not belying her nature as a truly formidable woman. None of this showed on his face, however; indeed, his countenance was inscrutable as the will of an ivory statue.
"Shall I guess your purpose?" she asked at the tail end of his reverie. "You sought something in that chest, something that is here no longer?"
"'Here no longer?'" interrupted Alistair, ignoring the death-glare Eldred threw at him over his shoulder, his eyes flashing dangerously once more. "You stole them, didn't you? You're… some kind of… sneaky… witch-thief!"
"How very eloquent," replied Morrigan, obviously unhappy to have to engage the Warden. "How does one steal from dead men?"
"Quite easily, it seems," continued Alistair, seemingly oblivious to how big a fool he was making of himself. Please don't say it, please don't say it, please don't say it! Eldred prayed silently to no deity in particular. "Those documents are Grey Warden property, and I suggest you return them!" And he said it, the mage thought in exasperation. Idiot!
"I will not, for 'twas not I who removed them! Invoke a name that means nothing here any longer if you wish; I am not threatened," replied Morrigan.
"Forgive my comrade's unseemly behavior; he is a good man, but can be quite dense at the most inopportune moments," Eldred began. "But would you be so kind as to tell us who took the treaties from here?"
"'Twas my mother, in fact," she replied, her exasperation still evident, but not so much as her relief.
"Can you take us to her?" he asked in repose.
"Hm. There is a sensible request. I like you," she remarked.
"I'd be careful. First it's, 'I like you…' but then 'ZAP!' Frog time," interjected Alistair.
"Alistair, with all due respect, would it be so difficult for you to PLEASE SHUT UP?!" Eldred shouted as he turned around slowly to regard the warrior. "And besides, even if she were this 'sneaky witch-thief,' then one, she'd have already turned you," he continued, ticking off on his left hand. "And two, I've known the counterspell for polymorph effects since I was seven. Please do yourself a favor and follow my lead. I know what I'm doing." Finished finally, and satisfied to note that everyone else in the party was chastised sufficiently such that they would not shout out similarly idiotic sentiments, he turned back to regard Morrigan. "Then by all means, please, lead on."
"Follow me then, if it pleases you," she said wryly. She turned and started off into the Wilds; the elf and his party followed behind.
"Greetings, Mother," spoke Morrigan as the party came upon a sizable hut. "I bring before you four Grey Wardens who…"
"I see them, girl," barked an old crone standing by the door of the dwelling. "Mm. Much as I expected. Except…" she said, regarding the party and Eldred.
"Are we supposed to believe you were expecting us?" asked Alistair. The mage cradled his face in his left hand, shaking his head in incredulity.
"You are required to do nothing, least of all believe. Shut one's eyes tight or open one's arms wide; either way, one's a fool," countered the crone.
"She's a witch, I tell you! We shouldn't be talking to her!" Daveth whispered.
"Quiet, Daveth! If she really is a witch, do you want to make her mad?" replied Jory sharply.
"There's a smart lad. Sadly irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, but it is not I who decides. Believe what you will," she said dismissively. She turned to Eldred. "And what of you?" she asked. "Does your elven mind give you a different viewpoint, or do you believe as the others do?"
"I'm not sure what to believe," he replied honestly.
"A statement that possesses far more wisdom than it implies," she remarked. "So much about you is uncertain. And yet I believe. Do I? Why, it seems I do!"
"So… this is a dreaded Witch of the Wilds?" joked Alistair. Eldred glared at him.
"Witch of the Wilds, eh? Morrigan must have told you that. She fancies such tales, though she would never admit it!" she observed drily. "Oh, how she dances under the moon!" The crone cackled wildly.
"They did not come to listen to your wild tales, Mother," chided Morrigan.
"True," the crone acknowledged. "They came for their treaties, yes? And before you begin barking, your precious seal wore off long ago. I have protected these." She pulled from her sleeve a bundle of scrolls, handing them to Eldred.
"You…" began Alistair, ready to launch into a full-on righteous rant that would have at best made him look even more like a fool, and at worse provoke the crone to attack; Eldred wanted no part of a scuffle with her–the power she wielded was so obvious to the mage's eyes that it was literally radiating from her like a shield. "…oh. You protected them."
"And why not?" the old woman countered. "Take them to your Grey Wardens and tell them this Blight's threat is greater than they realize!"
"Thank you for returning them," interjected Eldred before Alistair could attempt to enquire further; the old woman–even more so than her obviously formidable power–was unnerving him further the more time he spent in proximity to her.
"Such manners!" exclaimed the crone. "Always in the last place you look. Like stockings! Oh, do not mind me," she chuckled. "You have what you came for."
"Time for you to go, then," Morrigan remarked.
"Do not be ridiculous, girl!" interjected the old woman, sounding almost scandalized. "These are your guests."
"Oh, very well," huffed Morrigan. "I will show you out of the woods. Follow me." With that, she walked off. Eldred sighed, taking his staff and walking after her, Alistair, Daveth and Jory guarding the rear. They walked in silence through the woods, not willing to break the stillness that she felt necessary to keep. When evening came, she vanished. But it mattered not; before the party was the gate back to the camp at Ostagar.
