52. A Little Bit Invincible
Marnan felt a little bit invincible.
She stood solidly planted on the floor as a lesser demon blasted fire into her. The heat seared for a moment, breaking through her natural dwarven resistance, and then she felt a burst of healing magic from somewhere behind her. Grinning, Marnan cleaved the demon's head in twain while it was still spitting fire.
A pair of abominations behind it stumbled back as the rage demon combusted, and Marnan waded through the smoke with her axe swinging. They were sliced open under her onslaught, and she ignored the pain of their dying blows to tackle the desire demon that had positioned itself in the doorway.
The demon wove a spell that closed around Marnan's mind like icy pincers, but she shook it off, more glad than ever for her dwarven heritage. A moment later, her axe connected with the demon's inappropriately bare torso. The demon shrieked and clawed at Marnan's face, leaving stinging welts across her cheeks and nose under her helmet. Another burst of healing magic, this time from off to one side, quickly closed the wounds.
"With axe in hand the warrior cleaves
"A path of blood; wades through like leaves…" Leliana sang between her laughter.
"And should you ever do her wrong
"You'd do well to recall this song
"For bloody and proud and gory and strong
"That is the warrior Marnan!"
"Did you make that up just now?" Felicity called. A spell bolt shot out from the side, slamming into an abomination that Marnan realized was clawing at her back.
An arrow followed close behind the spell bolt, piercing the abomination's side. "Do you like it?" Leliana laughed. "I thought it quite suitable for our Marnan, yes?"
"A fine battle anthem," Marnan called, grinning despite (or perhaps because of?) the battle. "Any dwarf would be proud to be so lauded for her ability to wade through the guts and gore of her enemies!" She punctuated the statement by whirling her axe around herself and tearing open part of the desire demon's stomach. Acrid smoke spilled out of the creature through the wound, and it shrieked.
"Really, now," Wynne tsked. "Felicity, if I had known you became this chatty during life and death situations, I might have opened fire in class more often."
Leliana laughed. "Now that is a good way to teach students defensive magic, no?"
Marnan chuckled herself, slamming her shoulder into the desire demon's injury. When it doubled over, a final swing buried her axe in its throat, and the desire demon started to dissolve. Something bit into Marnan's back, but a burst of healing magic from Wynne's direction gave Marnan plenty of time to dislodge her axe and turn on her other attackers without any danger.
The four women were on the second floor of the Circle Tower, having fought their way past dozens of such monsters, and likely still to face many more. They were currently positioned in what had once been an office of some kind: a ruined desk provided ideal cover for Felicity and Leliana to fire from a distance, while the single doorway into the Tower corridors was an ideal choke point. All Marnan had to do was stand in the doorway and look menacing, and the creatures lined up for her axe like livestock to slaughter.
Wynne stood against one wall, separated from Felicity and Leliana as a matter of strategy (and Marnan agreed with the wisdom of not having both healers in a position where they could both be taken out by one fireball). The dwarf had to admit: while Felicity certainly did well enough as a healer, the younger mage had nothing on Wynne's capabilities. Marnan felt not only healed, but legitimately refreshed whenever one of Wynne's spells ran through her. It was rather spoiling her for any other healing, to be honest.
The last abomination dropped with a messy splurch, and Marnan yanked her axe out of it and looked around. The floor around her was littered with felled abominations and the ashy remains of lesser demons. She was the epicenter of a puddle of blood and gore that completely obscured the stone floor underneath.
Marnan grinned, leaning on her axe to catch her breath. Her three companions eyed the mess with a great deal more disdain than she did. "Why is it I'm the only one getting dirty, here?" the dwarf teased, pointedly wiping off the gore caked onto her armor.
"You seem to enjoy it, dear," Wynne said, smiling gently. "We wouldn't want to spoil your fun."
Felicity, meanwhile, was looking a little green. "You have part of a colon on your shoulder…"
Marnan dutifully picked off the offending organ and flung it away.
Leliana, meanwhile, was starting to range around the room, checking chests and drawers for anything of use. Marnan wasn't sure how to feel about the recent revelation that the bard truly was quite deft with locks and traps—the Orlesian had implied as much when she had joined the Wardens, but it was another thing entirely to see it in action.
Still, it wasn't Marnan's business to pry into the bard's past, though she was growing increasingly curious. Asking after others' stories would have been rather hypocritical, after all.
"Those were full manifestations," Felicity said at last. She raised her bag onto the desk and pulled out the large leatherbound book she was always carrying around. She flipped through it quickly with one hand, her other fumbling around in her pack for quill and ink. "The demons, I mean. No hosts or anything. That means that either the Veil has torn very thin here, or someone is purposely summoning these things, and they have enough ambient psychic energy to sustain their forms."
"Meaning…?" Marnan pressed, wading through the corpses to meet the mages at the desk.
"Well, if it's the latter, it might actually be a good sign." Felicity apparently found the page she had been looked for, and huddled over the book to jot down some notes. "It means that there are still people alive in here."
"Unless the only ones left are blood mages," Wynne said sadly.
Felicity paused in her writing, glancing up at Wynne with a frown. "Do you think they would suffer being used as energy sources like that? It would be more logical for the demons to keep a handful of mage or Templar prisoners alive for the purpose of fuel. Unless they can use the abominations… I hadn't thought of that, though I doubt the possessing demon would want to share. I suppose it depends on the type." Felicity flipped a page and hurriedly started writing.
Marnan leaned over to peek at the page and saw something about 'anchoring the animus through the Veil' and 'full manifestations in connection to partial.' The dwarf could only shrug and trust that Felicity could put whatever knowledge she was collecting to good use.
"Hey, you ladies like books, yes?" Leliana's voice spoke up, and Wynne and Marnan both glanced over. The bard was kneeling at a heavy wooden chest, her lockpicking tools arrayed around her.
The older mage chuckled. "I admit, I have a fondness for them, be they painstakingly researched histories or not-so-painstakingly researched romances."
Leliana chuckled as well, then reached into the chest and pulled out a huge black book. She dropped it on the ground in front of her with a heavy thud. While Felicity barely glanced up before continuing to pore over her codex, Marnan and Wynne crossed the room to Leliana's side.
Wynne knelt next to the bard and gracefully turned to the first page. The dwarf was careful not to drip blood on the book as she leaned over Wynne's shoulder. For the most part, the contents of the book were incomprehensible—even moreso than in Felicity's codex. Each page Wynne turned revealed another strange symbol or design, and the few words present did not seem to be in any language Marnan knew. And as a well-educated noblewoman, she knew more than a few, at least well enough to recognize them.
Wynne's brow was knit as she carefully turned each page, her eyes boring into the paper. Leliana bit her lip and met Marnan's eyes, seemingly taken aback that her find was perhaps not as well-received as she'd thought it would be.
"What is it?" Marnan finally asked after a long silence.
"It is a grimoire," Wynne said. "A mage's spellbook." She sighed and closed the tome. "It is, however, not like any spellbook that I've ever seen. It is… archaic. The few rituals that I recognize are very, very old versions of ones used today. That Irving had a book of such ancient knowledge, locked up in his office all this time… why did he never tell us?"
Felicity had wandered over now, and bent to study the cover of the book. The black leather was etched with a stylized tree. "That symbol…" she ran over to grab her codex and brought the heavy tome back to the group. Kneeling on the ground, Felicity began flipping through the pages. Then, about a third of the way into the tome, she uttered a soft "Aha!" and pointed.
On the open page of Felicity's tome was a sketch, accompanied by various scribbled notes in the margins pertaining to symbolic meaning and historic precedent. The sketch matched the etching on the front of the tome almost perfectly, with any variations excusable as caused by the rendering process itself.
"This is one of the symbols associated with Asha'bellanar. Meila told me about it when we were recuperating after Ostagar. Apparently, it's an old Dalish legend about a spirit woman who walks the wilds. The name means 'Woman of Many Years,' and it's said she is a powerful mage who walked the Wilds centuries ago, and continues to do so today."
Marnan blinked. "Flemeth?"
Felicity nodded and looked up at her. "Yes, or so Meila seemed to believe. That's why she brought it up, because we were staying at the hut of a Dalish legend. She was practically gushing, to be honest."
"Flemeth?" Wynne asked, shocked. "You've met Flemeth? The Flemeth?"
"Ooh, I would have given anything to be there," Leliana said. "I wonder if all the stories about her are true?"
"A couple, at least." Felicity closed her codex and hugged it to her chest. "She is a powerful mage—a shapeshifter. And she does have at least one daughter. Leliana, you've actually met her."
Leliana's eyes widened. "You mean Morrigan, don't you? I thought there was something strange about her. To think, she's Flemeth's daughter!"
Wynne continued to frown in apparent bewilderment. "How can you be so sure this was truly the Flemeth of legend?"
Felicity opened her mouth, a spark in her eye indicating that she had a mentally prepared argument for the affirmative. Such arguments from Felicity were often long and rambling, so Marnan spoke before the mage.
"Perhaps she was, and perhaps she was not. In either case, it is apparent that this—" Marnan indicated the black grimoire "—is hers. After how she saved our lives and sheltered us after the battle, it is the least we can do to return it to her."
"Why would the mages have Flemeth's grimoire in the first place?" Leliana wondered.
"Why else, child?" Wynne said. "To study it." Wynne pulled her own pack off her back and slid the book into it. "Though I admit I intend to have a stern word with Irving once this is all over. Really, keeping such a find from the rest of the Circle? What was he thinking?"
Felicity smiled, and all the women packed up their various books and thieving tools. "You always did say that mage politics was a matter of madness more often than not."
"And getting moreso all the time," Wynne sighed, and stood.
As the four women headed out of the room and started back through the circular corridors, Leliana said, "Felicity, Meila is the Dalish elf who is always glaring at me, yes?"
Marnan laughed. "That is a pretty apt description of Meila in general. 'The glaring Dalish elf.'"
"She doesn't glare at me," Felicity said with a shrug. They turned and started heading up a staircase to the next floor.
"And rest assured that the rest of us are amazed by that."
Leliana smiled, but pressed on with, "Does she know many Dalish stories, like that?"
"Oh, yes. She has a great deal of knowledge of her peoples' lore." Felicity's eyes glazed over a bit, which Marnan found both curious and amusing. "I can't tell you how much knowledge I've gleaned from her that is impossible to find in Ferelden texts. The historical accounts that the Dalish keep are an entirely different perspective from what stands as historical 'fact'… it's both fascinating and disconcerting to know two different versions of history, realizing that both can't be true."
"I think I would like to hear some of these stories," Leliana said wistfully. "I've heard a couple in my travels, but the Dalish are usually so private about such things."
"Oh, I couldn't do them justice," Felicity said. "Don't ask me to try to storytell… I'm notoriously dull at anything requiring such creativity and finesse."
"You should ask Meila when we get back to Redcliffe," Marnan suggested. "The elf seems to love talking about her culture. Who knows? It might make her stop glaring at you quite so fervently."
Leliana smiled. "I think I will do that."
Their conversation was cut short by a pair of blood mages who came around the corner, spotted them, and immediately started casting. Marnan dove in immediately, barreling into the shades that the mages summoned while Leliana's arrows sailed past her, into the mages themselves. The women made short work of that encounter. The abominations that littered the floor beyond them proved of little difficulty as well.
The desire demon and enthralled Templar on the next floor proved a bit more difficult, if only because the Templar actually had a fair amount of battle prowess. Even so, Marnan far preferred taking a few hits to letting the demon play with the poor man's mind, and her companions seemed to agree. Thus, she was forced to put the poor man down, rather than let him be the plaything of the wretched creature.
A couple heals from the mages later, and Marnan was ready for her next bout. Felicity hung back in the room with the poor Templar, jotting down a couple notes in her codex, while the other three started ahead.
However, the women didn't anticipate what kind of battle they were in for as they stepped out into the central hall on the third floor. Standing beside a pillar of flesh-like corruption, over the prone body of a mage, was a creature larger than any of the abominations they had seen thus far.
Ponderously, it turned its eyes to them, and Marnan felt a rushing in her ears. "Oh, look… visitors. I'd entertain you, but too much effort involved." Its voice was sluggish and smooth, calming like a lullaby. Marnan shook her head, feeling a strange lethargy descending upon her.
"I will not listen to your lies, demon," Leliana said sleepily, covering her ears with her hands. "You have no… power over me." The bard swayed and collapsed, and Marnan couldn't seem to dredge up the proper alarm.
"There's so much violence in the world," the demon cooed. "Don't you want to leave it all behind?"
"Resist!" Wynne muttered. "We must resist, else we are all lost…" The elderly mage fell to her knees.
"You've fought hard. You deserve… to rest."
Marnan planted her feet, fighting the waves of drowsiness, even as Wynne collapsed behind her. Her mind was fogging, despite Marnan's attempts to shake off the spell. She couldn't… give into…
..what? What was she…
No. No, fight it!
Her head drooped, and she felt the world tilting around her. Her mind reeled, but there was something… some spark of hope…
Felicity! Felicity hadn't yet entered the room! She was still free of this trap!
Marnan opened her mouth, taking a breath to shout a warning to the unenchanted mage… but her voice chose that moment to flee her, as did the rest of reality.
The ground rushed up to meet her, and she knew no more.