Currently I stood on the top of a small hut, an awesome view of the battle ground that had been the courtyard before the Chantry. It was chaos and in the midst of midnight, death, zombies outfitted with foot long claws and a desire to do nothing but kill, I had managed to put aside the above and just coolly fire lit arrows into said zombies. It was thanks to that elvish ability, it had to be, because while I'm good under pressure (don't laugh or look at previous evidence), pressure in Redcliffe at this point in time was far beyond I had ever had to fathom back home. I watched as Finn and Alistair had rallied the defenders, barricades managing to divide the monsters into a manageable drip feed. But it was taking a toll on those fighting, men who didn't really have any notion of what to do with swords since the end of the occupation. I had just fired an arrow into a zombie, grinning again at the accomplishment when it sounded. A scream. Nothing that this evening I had not heard before, apart from the fact it was a male child screaming. And I knew exactly who it was. Oh my God. I can't believe I had forgotten him. I don't know if anyone has had that feeling. Like a livewire was running down with my spinal cord, just a bolt of lightning inside my body alight and just so awake and aware. Lightning flashed inside my bones and I just reacted. I dropped the bow, a hand yanking at the strap holding my quiver to my side and it fell to the roof top. I gauged the leap in a second, and took barely a running step before I jumped over the small distance between houses. I jumped over chimneys and uneven roof tops until I knew I was at the right house. Mostly knew it was the right house. Redcliffe and the stilted houses had proven to be larger than I remembered in the game, a lot more detailed and numerous in number. Forcing my thoughts to the side I decided to go with gut reaction and instinct, it was that had helped me get across to the boy's current residence in such a short time. I let my elvish body move how it would, just directing it where the hell I wanted it to go. The window wasn't at this moment open, but it was the only point of entry I had, the door barricaded to the zombies. Well hopefully still barricaded to the zombies. I pushed feet first into the hinged shutters, the force made me wince, but enough momentum and weight was behind that move that they broke inwards and deposited me on my ass, hard, on the top story of that house. Except Bevin was on the bottom one, in a wardrobe with monsters. Shit. I got to my feet and had nearly left the room before I spun and saw the chest. I had remembered at my shit landing I had a knife. The Lothering knife. That was it now I had divulged my bow. But since I had forgotten the boy, Finn had not convinced or paid the lad for the sword so it was still here. The fact that I had no training what so ever was unimportant, it was a sharp pointy metal stick and would be better than witty retorts to save the boy. I didn't waste time searching for a key, I picked up an ornamental statue, it was pretty heavy and would do the trick, I supposed. I gritted my teeth and pounded at the lock. Literally to death, as the metal bent and finally broke apart he screamed again. My hearing became that and the sawing breath that yanked in and out of my lungs. I lifted the lid, grabbed the sword and was running down the stairs in an instant.

Then it all happened down quite a long tunnel of vision. I grabbed the bannister and leapt becoming an obstacle to the zombies that had managed to crack open the door. God I hoped I would be a live obstacle. They were hideous, just parodies of the people they had been. Flesh was slack and sort of dripping off faces, eyes were thick looking like the liquid inside had hardened. But the noise they made was the worst thing, sometimes hissing, sometimes a disembodied moaning, but when they opened and closed their mouths their teeth clacked together and it did more to freak me out then they're actually quite fast shuffling towards me. The sword, whatever it was, was light in my hands however and I found myself using it like a demented fencer. It wasn't suited to the style any more than I was and the bloody monsters were not going down.

"Fuck you, you fucken fuck. Die."

Ah eloquence my old friend. I resorted to a pretty wild swing. It connected with a pair of legs, hewing them off at the knee. As it collapsed, a little slower but still going for quite literally my jugular a little kernel of confidence grew. Not so much that I suddenly learnt how to use a sword, but enough that the fear died a little and I could try something else instead of rude little pokes at chests. A lunge from a zombie, that conveniently had claws, I parried! Parried! And I would describe my backhand as lazy, though it severed through sinew and neck bits. Again, it didn't die, but its movements were jerky and lacked any sort of coordination so it allowed me to concentrate on the last whole one and the three quarter one that had been my first sort of victory.

So a smashing first duel became carnage pretty quickly. Bevin thought it was a grand idea to open the wardrobe door. I, as fate would have it, was standing quite close to the door and received a solid door to the back of the head connection.

"Back inside. Get back inside!"

I didn't wait for him to do what I yelled. Clamping a hand to the latest wound I kicked the door closed and tried to breathe through the pain while fending off the monster. Who had this moment was steadily overpowering me. Sawing breaths had become terrified yanks of air. I prayed to Maharial the first, which she would know what to do. Somehow her skills as a hunter would have her knowing exactly what to do in an elf versus zombie duel. I fell, forgetting the shorter zombie, again smacking my head on the wardrobe, fuck whoever thought wood was a great material for heavy furniture. I lost my grip on the sword. As I scrambled to find my feet, which was bloody difficult with a head suddenly filled with cotton wool and an arm that had gone dead from the shoulder down, I forced my left hand to grab the knife. I found it, spun it and sank it through the eye hole of the hissing mostly legless zombie. It had been accompanied by a prayer to Falon'din. Which hadn't really been my first deity to pray to, but whatever I or he had done had the zombie suddenly dead. I yanked the knife free, resolutely ignoring the stuff on the blade, and looked at the last. I'm not sure when the undead suddenly started bleeding red, but it made me feel good and I pretended that they could feel pain too. I scissored my weapon across its eyes, gaining the ground it gave up against what I would term a ferocious onslaught. I tripped, but didn't fall, over the decapitated zombie. I stooped to stab that one in the head, and with a vindictive streak that I will say was totally Maharial's, swiped and took one of its claws hands as a weapon. I promised myself that I could vomit after I swapped the knife into my sore hand and proceeded to poke holes in my undead enemy. It was going pretty well until what I guessed was Bevin tried to exit his hidey hole again. The zombie seemed to find the boy better prey and darted around me with agility it hadn't really shown before. I was about to do something that I didn't think I had in me. I dropped the zombie hand, thank god, and grabbed the sword that I had, yes tripped over. My brain decided to go for the smaller target of the head, practical as ever I see. I lunged into a run and proceeded to jump over a flailing undead corpse, and run the tip of the very sharp sword into the zombie's head, through the zombie's head, out of the zombie's head and into the wardrobe, whilst yelling out something that I am damn sure was in elvish that was along the lines of,

"Take that you undead motherfucker."

Only after having rammed the sword into and through the wardrobe did I stop to think about the probability of hitting Bevin. I thought it, vented a little of frustration by booting the severed head against the wall before approaching the wardrobe again.

"da'len?"

I ventured a monster brain and guts stained hand to the door and psyched myself up to reveal. Two things happened. It opened and a young terrified boy zoomed out of it and into my arms. He was like a limpet, skinny arms wrapped around my neck, doing a terrific job of strangling me, and his legs wrapped around my waist and locked around my back. I was at a loss as to what to do before my arms responded. One looped around his neck, the other I scooped under his butt to help hold onto his hug.

We didn't say anything, I just listened to his breath catch at every centimetre of his lungs and throat as the tears made his shoulders shake. I straightened my back and looked towards the door. I could hear the sound from out there now, a ragged cheer. I knew that a few tears of my own leaked from sore smoke reddened eyes, but at least the night was over. I stepped over bodies and slid out from the crack between the splintered frame and ruined door, heading towards the courtyard and hopefully all of my comrades.

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