He stepped into the ruin, the heavy stone doors shutting behind him with thunderclaps. The Tivinters loved their enchantments.
The sound caused the handful of soldiers standing in the wide Tivinter entry hall to look up, seeing the Warden standing just before the doorway.
One whispered something, and the others apparently agreed. Almost as one they turned and bolted through the door leading to the ruins proper, giving Lance a glimpse of the long corridor beyond.
He sighed. They were going to make this a little more difficult than it really had to be. It would be far easier to kill them if they stood still. But he would fight them, if he had to. And they would die. It was simply how it had to be.
And of course it would happen in a Tivinter ruin, and of course his love would be hiding from him with his Old God child. And of course there would be forty-odd men standing between him and her.
He intended to make good on his promise to Lilith: everyone between them would die.
He pushed open the large doors, their hinges rusting and requiring force to open. He entered the corridor.
It was long, narrow. There was only one door that led out, and it was being guarded by a dozen armed and armored troops. Mercenaries.
Lance stepped further in; let it be known that he wasn't giving up. He kept his cloak drawn up around him, used it to make him look bigger, more imposing.
One of the guardsmen said something in a language Lance didn't know. Probably Rivaini or some weird Free Marcher tongue. It didn't matter.
All that mattered was that four of the soldiers were stepping closer, as many as could fit in the narrow hall at once and fight. They held wicked blades, curved and blackened. They reminded Lance of Darkspawn blades.
Lance didn't speak.
He reached up, untied his cloak. It fell to the ground, floating on the ruin's stale air. He clenched his gloved hands, limbered them up for what was coming.
The guards shuddered when they saw him.
He was clad in the leather armor, the few punctures patched from his earlier fight. But now he had the addition of quite a few blades. Knives crisscrossed his body in easy to reach places, steel glinting in the light that filtered in from the cracks in the ceiling.
He was not going to die.
He crossed his arms, drew the blades sheathed on his forearms. And he turned them around in his hands, getting a comfortable grip.
The mercenaries charged, swords raised.
And he was slashing left and right, sharp and sudden. Arterial spray painted the walls, created gargled death cries. And the four men were dead.
The guards charged in their full number, hoping to overwhelm him.
He saw the weaknesses in their stances, in their armor. In their spirit.
They feared him. They feared dying. This battle was already won.
He stabbed out; let his blades lodge in a pair of throats. He crouched low, drew knives from his boots and found gaps in armor and ankles and knees.
He stood, the blades rising with him, finding eyes, necks, raised arms.
He spun, plunging the knives in a soldier's chest with force alone. He felt one of them grab him, try to pull him clear.
And Lance was putting blades in exposed flesh, bare patches unprotected by armor.
He was at the end of the corridor before the last body fell dead.
He spat out blood that was not his own.
The doors were heavy, required a strong boot to open properly.
The corridor led into a wide antechamber, a two-story affair. The upper level was bathed in sunlight, but the angle created silhouettes that told of a great number of soldiers, wielding bows.
Before Lance stood Captain Dirge, looking a little flustered to see the hallway behind Lance bathed in bright, coppery red.
And to see the Warden Commander before him, looking not at all bothered by the blood that stained his armor and his hands and his fine blades.
A small squad of troops was on the opposite end of the antechamber, standing before a great wooden door, holding axes. They had been awaiting orders to begin chopping when Lance arrived.
Captain Dirge waved forward a good number of men to his side, carrying swords and polearms and not at all hindered by the terrain. This would indeed be interesting.
"You should not have come," Dirge said. "The Empress will find that her faith in you was misplaced."
"Stand aside," said Lance. "Do not try to fight and you will live."
Dirge laughed. He saw that he had the advantage and was hoping to end this battle quickly. It wouldn't, of course. Lance had no intention of finishing these men quickly. For the act of denying him passage, threatening the woman he loved, he would end them slowly. He was already calculating the best ways to wound them so that they bled out slowly.
"Fire!" Dirge ordered. And the archers on the second floor did so. A volley of arrows went speeding towards Lance. He stood there, didn't move, didn't react.
Most of the arrows didn't pass into the small doorway where he was standing. They snapped against the walls or fell short. They went too high and broke against the stone rising above.
A few were on target, though. And he took them on the chest.
Three landed home, two arrowheads burying themselves into his leather armor, doing nothing to hurt him. But one hit him between the ribs, doing no serious damage but hurting him. He stood still.
And Dirge made a noise of distaste.
"Give me that!" he shouted, and a crossbow was handed to him. He shouldered it, aimed it right at Lance. The Warden Commander held his breath, hoped that he would survive this hit to visit ruin on these poor fools.
The bolt fire with a twang of the string, hitting him in the shoulder. Pain raced up his neck, the bolt going right through. He heard it land on the floor behind him, sliding a distance until it came to a full stop.
He almost lost his footing, the force causing him to stumble. He went to a knee, blood dripping from the wound. And he looked up, saw Dirge grin.
And then the man was looking on in horror.
"That's the best you've got?" Lance asked. And Dirge took a large step backwards.
"Are you mental?" he cried. "I've got an army! What do you have?"
Lance gave a wry laugh, loud enough to echo throughout the antechamber.
"You have men," said Lance. "You have men who fear their deaths. Men who want nothing more than to leave right now. Because if they stay I promise that they will die. And I will not let one of them live. This day demands blood. Yours. Or theirs."
And that created a ripple throughout the men Dirge had gathered. They saw the Warden in the doorway, wounded but still deadly. They saw the mutilated remains of their companions in the corridor past him.
Dirge looked left and right, refusing to believe that his men were going to abandon him.
"If I stand," said Lance. "Then I will kill. And I will never stop killing."
Dirge spat angrily. He turned to the men waiting at the far door with axes, he pointed and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Start chopping, damn it!"
And he turned to his men, stepped back so that they were an armored wall between him and the Warden Commander.
"Kill him."
And then Lance stood, knives went flying, taking out legs and arms. He reached behind him, drew the thick blades at his back.
And he stepped into the horde of men. He began slashing cutting. He recalled the hours of training in Vigil's Keep, with Oghren. He let the rage build within him.
A year of loneliness, of separation. A year of hating himself. Betrayal. Darkspawn.
He was letting it fuel him, letting his movements become raw power.
He lopped off arms, heads. He felt armor buckle under his blades. He felt the tip of a knife slice neatly into him, let it roll off. He killed the wielder.
And he lost his blades in the chest of a screaming soldier, drew others, let them fly. He was lost. He saw red.
He was surrounded by red, spinning, turning. A shield splintered, the wielder crying out in pain. An arrow whistled past his head, the firer getting a knife in his leg that caused him to scream.
And then Lance was on Dirge, covered in the blood of thirty men. The sound of wood being chopped echoed throughout. And Dirge looked up at Lance, eyes wide and fearful.
"Please," he whispered. "Maker… have mercy!"
And Lance raised one gore-soaked blade, held to the hollow of Dirge's neck.
"When you see Him," he whispered. "Tell Him He's next."
And then he made a shallow cut, sending Dirge into a bout of gasping and cloying.
Lance stood, looked around, saw that the antechamber was a mess of gore and armored limbs. The second level had a few bodies, made by a crossbow he'd wrangled. The three men chopping at the door turned then.
Their eyes went wide, and they dropped their weapons instantly. Lance let them flee.
He reached the door; saw how close the men had been to breaching it. He could see through the wide gashes to the other side, to where the faint smell of magic wafted in. He could see little else.
He reached through one of the wider gashes, found the bar that sealed the door from the other side. It pulled away easily.
He shoved the door open with his hip, felt the pain of several stabs and a wide gash. He was a lot worse off than he'd realized. But he couldn't stop now.
He stumbled into the room, worked quickly to assess the area, still holding the knife and pointing it in a threat.
He scanned the room, saw that it was wide, saw that pillars held up the crumbling ceiling, heard the sound of water, saw a raised dais where bright sunlight came down, centered on a lone woman-
He gasped.
There she was. He let his knife arm drop, relaxed. There was no threat.
He stepped forward. She was standing there, back to him. She was wearing big, gaudy Orlesian robes, her hair still in that bun that she always wore it in. She looked little changed from the day he had last seen her, which was good. She had always been perfect the way she was.
"Morrigan," he said, his breath coming shorter than he would have liked. He was a mess. She wouldn't like it.
She turned, saw him standing there. She was so perfect, so wonderful, so beautiful.
Her lips were full, certain. They became a brief smile, as radiant as he always dreamed it would be. And then it became a worried frown, a look of concern.
"You should not have come," she said, and her beautiful voice echoed through the chamber. He wanted to laugh; the first words he had heard her speak in a year and she was telling him that he was wrong! So like her!
But then it gave way to anger.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You should not have come. I told you not to, did I not? I told you we would never see each other again! You-"
"Shut up," Lance said.
"Oh, I will not-"
And then there was someone next to him, a woman. He turned, saw that it was Lilith. He wanted to ask her what she was doing. But he already knew.
"The child!" she shouted. "Where is the child? What are you doing with it? What has it become?"
Lance turned to face Morrigan, nodded. "Where is our child?"
Morrigan sighed, closed her eyes. "I wish I could say that things had turned out the way I hoped."
"No," Lilith said, stepping forward. "They did not! Where is Urthemiel? What have you done?"
She turned the Warden, livid, shouting, "You cannot trust her, Warden, she has betrayed you before. Who knows what she has done with the child? Perhaps she is already harnessing its power!"
Morrigan looked at them both, too stunned by Lilith's clear resemblance to her to speak. She looked at Lance, her face quite determined. She perhaps already knew what was happening, how this would end. And she averted her eyes, looked to the floor.
Lance's hand touched Lilith's arm.
"You will not hurt him again," said Lilith. "Not if I have a say in it! We-"
And she was gasping, trying to catch her breath as the magic was drained from her. She looked at Lance, tried to bring a question to her lips.
And she looked down at her stomach, stunned to see a blade now protruding there. Stunned to see Lance holding it.
He raised his hand, holding a roll of expensive parchment. And visible was a bright red seal, strange, foreign to them both. Something he had not recognized when it arrived at Vigil's Keep. Because it was the personal seal of the Orlesian Adviser on Mage Affairs.
"I got your letter," he said to Morrigan. And he let it drop to the ground. He brought his face close to Lilith's, blood trickling from her mouth. "Did you think I was stupid? Or did you really think you were that good?"
He kicked her down, made her lay on her back, blade jutting up from her gut.
"I know who you are," he said. And then he spat, cursed. "Flemeth."