Chapter Eleven
Whatever Solona has been expecting, this is not it. This maelstrom of confusion and chaos and noise is trying to eat her and she hasn't even come within twenty feet of a Darkspawn. The men around her; they're hardened veterans and they've closed ranks twice now to repel waves of attackers. She hasn't lost concentration once; her spell holds.
It actually holds.
The incoming spells from the Darkspawn warlocks are bouncing in every direction and never touching her troops. She is so full of jubilant victory that the last few months are brushed off of her like falling leaves. Of no substance other than a small crunch as they break apart under her feet, she has purpose.
Maybe, just this once, everyone will be okay.
The explosion from the tower at her back gives her pause. She glances over her shoulder and watches as the flames burst into the night sky and it's so beautiful. That's the signal, she knows. Although her troop hasn't been overrun surely fielding more men on the side of good is . . . well a good thing. Right?
A tree crumples with an ear-shattering crunch and men scream from her left flank. One of the soldiers assigned to her personal guard pulls her out of the way just before a splatter of men rain down from the heavens. Raining men? What-?
The expressions; the faces of the dead men at her feet . . . its terror. Pure and unholy. She tries to see what could have struck this fear and flung the soldiers so far from the line of fighting. The man guarding her doesn't bother to protect her from this sight.
When his eyes catch sight of the very large and very angry OGRE bearing down on their troop, the man shoves her aside and tries pushing his way free of his compatriots; have to get away get out how does this thing actually exist? Hands cold, heart petrified, Solona watches the monster bash through half her men before a shout across the battle field distracts it.
Duncan. And the Wardens.
And the King.
The golden armor of King Cailan is unmistakable. As is the bone crushing death he suffers at the hands of the ogre.
The flow of battle changes so quickly around her that she doesn't have time to think through the mess of her thoughts. Doesn't have time to attempt a rescue of the King, she should at least try, and she's pushed back as the men around her disperse. Their retreat reveals the horrible truth of this attack; there are more Darkspawn that anyone had told her was possible. Their gruesome faces are twisted with something that is beyond emotion. They advance with a dark and evil purpose.
This must be what the Void is like; screaming and blood and death at every step. Most of her troops have fled or are lying motionless on the ground. Her eyes are fixed on the carnage in front of her. The reinforcements! Where are the reinforcements?
A soldier grabs her, turning her roughly, and pushes her back towards the fortress; away. Go. Run. GET OUT. When she stumbles at the base of the entrance, the soldier keeps on running. The blood of a thousand dead men swims in her vision. Or maybe it's just her own blood; she realizes vaguely that the ground she's landed on is covered in jagged edges and her hands are bleeding. Her knees too, through the fabric of her robes.
Quieter; the fighting is quieter. She doesn't know much about martial things but she knows enough to realize this is VERY bad. She supposes that its time; death comes to us all. The tree line is over run. Her eyes search for the creature that will take her. O Maker, I will sit at your right hand when you call for me. Call for me.
Instead, a wounded cry from the ground by her side, just a few feet away, draws her attention. Half-buried under a Darkspawn corpse, a woman soldier screams again in pain as she pushes at the body, freeing herself but still trapped. Solona can see that the creature's blade has pinned the woman to the ground, through the shoulder; blood drips freely from a wound at her side as well. She needs help, healing, badly.
Solona feels this moment. It spirals around her, holding her in time and away from all of the gore surrounding her. She is supposed to die. Right here, right now. But, she needs to save who she can. Everybody lives.
Nobody lives. Not really.
After five weeks of chanting and expecting, death is here for her. It howls her name through the mouth of an entire invading army. Its heartbeat, the footsteps of her fleeing countrymen, pounding out doom doom DOOM on this blood soaked earth.
Solona thinks. Moments. Fragments. Mother's dying screams, the forever silenced brothers. Eyes of judgmental fellow apprentices. Swords of nervous shining templars, ready to strike her down for something she can't comprehend and doesn't know how to control. Cullen with his kind words and gentle eyes and his loving tone. The laughing yet vacant stare of Neria as she's carried away, gone forever. How many have died around her in the last weeks? Can she join them, knowing what she's been through? No.
Her will rises to meet the voices of the horde.
NO.
Hands still dripping with her own blood, Solona reaches down and pulls the sword free from the other woman's body. They both scream and she replaces the cold metal with her touch, glowing blue and tinged with red.
-!-
It's later. Much later and far enough away from Ostagar that Solona that can finally breathe without fearing something will hear her. Her hands work quickly. No more magic flows from her fingers, she has none left right now. Not after the escape. Rather, bandages are wound tightly around angry red slashes as she apologizes again to the woman she's patching back together.
The woman's face tightens with pain and her breathing is labored. The both of them should be dead. Both of them are thinking this as they shake with exhaustion and pain.
The woman's eyes open wide and she gasps as Solona tightens the cloth a little more around her midsection. Solona places a calming hand on her forehead. She's out of potions that could help the agony. She doesn't even have a lyrium vial left for herself. "Just relax. I'm done for now."
The woman nods and lies motionless, trying to calm her erratic heartbeat. Solona thinks she'll be okay, that she'll live. The wounds, while serious, have stopped bleeding. Her efforts at healing have saved at least one person; Wynne would have been proud. Wynne! She hasn't even considered the rest of the Circle and whether they made it out too. They might have; there were only two of them down on the field with the rest of the army. Most had stayed far above the main battle.
"My name is Marian Hawke. What's yours?" The woman, Marian, snaps Solona out of her worrying and she looks back down. Blue eyes stare up at her, steadily. Despite being covered in her own blood, some of Solona's, and that of the Darkspawn Marian's gaze is steady on her face.
They hadn't introduced themselves. They'd been too busy fleeing for their lives. "I'm Solona."
"Thank you for saving me. I owe you my life."
She's never been good at accepting praise. Solona's cheeks redden. "Just doing my job."
Marian struggles to brace herself up on her elbows, hissing in pain the whole time. "Regardless; thank you." Those assessing eyes look her up and down. "You don't look too bad. Why were you just kneeling next to me on the field? Why weren't you running for your life?"
Solona stands, and moves away from the woman on the ground. The cave they're in is low, but opens back into the earth far enough that their small fire does not show light on the surface. Its dry too; she really had been lucky to get the two of them this far. Especially with the drain on her energy and the mostly useless Marian. They'd both been propped up by her staff by the time they'd fallen in here.
Lucky.
"Solona?"
She walks to the entrance. The night is quiet. Too quiet. There are no animals out; not on a night like this. The air she breathes still tastes like ash and death. Behind her, Marian shifts and curses softly under her breath. She rejoins her cave-mate.
"I was supposed to die. I didn't really think there was much point in trying to run anymore; not with those monsters screaming at my heels."
"You were supposed to die?" Marian says this like it's that most absurd thing she's heard in days. "How were you supposed to die? Do you have some way to tell the future or something?"
The mage shakes her head and drops down to the fire. It's warm, warmer than she had intended to make it. "I . . . made a mistake. Withheld information from the First Enchanter at the Tower. Do you know about the Tower?" Marian nods but says nothing and allows her to continue. "He sent me away. He said I was supposed to help the war effort and I guess maybe I did. At least a little. But –"
"Did someone die because of you?"
Did anyone die? Not really. Except . . . Neria. Hanging from that almost-templar's arms like a rag doll. If she'd have come forward sooner maybe the Circle would have done something about Jowan, before he dragged Neria into his scheming. Maybe they could have . . . oh Maker. It was all her fault.
"Did they?"
Again Solona's wandering thoughts are interrupted by Marian. "Doesn't matter. I was in the wrong and I was sent to war. I wasn't supposed to survive."
"And who told you that? Whose decision was it that you die?"
Well, now, that's actually a good question. It had been Irving, hadn't it? When he'd told her that he knew about Jowan and had handed down her sentence. No, that wasn't right. He hadn't come out and said anything about her death. Then Greagoir? Not him either. Despite his seething anger at Solona for being with Cullen he'd just hoped that she'd die.
Has it been her? Has she convinced herself that she was going to die? Yes. She has. Alone in her room and full of despair at the idea of her friend being a blood mage. She has been mentally leading herself to the slaughter since she watched Irving walk out of that garden. Something flickers in her chest, heavy with despair. Why?
"I think it was me." After the last few weeks; her terrible Harrowing and the loss of Cullen combined with the massive defeat of the battle this day Solona feels like a complete failure. And now, she's realized that she's essentially been having suicidal thoughts without even knowing it. Her analytical mind wants to explode. She desperately wants to cry.
"Good thing I was there, then, bleeding to death and just waiting for you to help me."
A laugh breaks the heavy mood; Solona wipes her eyes and glances over at Marian. The other woman looks more comfortable now and is smiling.
"Good point. You probably saved my life tonight as well."
Two women sit in a cave in the northern part of the Korcari Wilds. Both are covered in blood and both are grinning in the face of defeat and death. One turns to the other and says, "You saved my life."
The other shakes her head. "No, really, you saved mine." There a beat of silence before one hands the other a piece of bread and they get down to the business of becoming friends.