115. Cowardice and Courage
He was going to die; he was going to die; he was going to die.
A fireball slammed into the wall five feet from him, and Jowan jumped away with a yelp, closing his eyes and covering his face. The cavern echoed with low, demonic laughter. The mage shuddered. It sounded exactly like the demon he remembered, who had boxed him around and bullied him into such a state that he had told it about Kazar.
"Oh no you don't!" Alistair's voice cried. This was followed by the unique sound of a metal sword scraping against a spiny carapace.
Jowan dared to open his eyes. The Pride Demon was a massive form that stood on the edge of the crater. Its shark-like maw was spread wide in a terrifying grin, especially as it reached down to bodily pick Alistair up by the sword arm. It brought the dangling Templar's face close to its own and sneered, "Do you really think you can stop me?"
Alistair, amazingly, didn't look at all intimidated (Jowan was intimidated, and he was clear across the cavern!), though it probably helped that Felicity casted another defensive buff on him while the demon gave the rest of them a reprieve from its spell-slinging.
"As far as I'm concerned," Alistair said boldly, "you're just a snobby little mage who needs some sense knocked into him."
The demon laughed, a low, rumbling sound that spread its malice throughout the broad cavern. "And who is going to do that? You?" Contemptuously, it turned and threw Alistair bodily into the crater. Felicity threw a shield up where he landed to cushion his fall.
Jowan felt something nudge his shoulder, and he jumped. Leliana gave him a pointed look and raised her bow. Maker, people shouldn't sneak around in situations like this! "The shot's clear! Take it while you can, no?" Taking her own advice, the bard raised her bow and fired, and her arrow joined a myriad of others that lodged in among the spines along the demon's massive form.
Jowan nodded uncertainly, but he was at a loss as to what to do here. He'd never been good at dealing damage... that had always been Kazar, as proven by the demon now gleefully pouring a torrent of lightning over Alistair. Felicity, who Jowan could see huddled in a doorway behind the fight, went to her knees from the effort of maintaining a magical shield around Alistair, and even then the Templar could be heard shouting in pain. Jowan shuddered again. So far, the demon had been content to focus on tormenting Alistair and had ignored the rest of them. Jowan found he was content with that; he had had Kazar's wrath fixed on him often enough in the past to know that he certainly did not want it now.
He couldn't compete with this. He'd never been able to out-spell-sling Kazar, even when the elf had been half his size and sick. This? Anything Jowan mustered would be shrugged off just like the arrows that even now still lodged in the demon's hide. Even his blood magic wouldn't be powerful enough... the strongest thing he'd managed to do with that was knock over a few Templars. A Pride Demon would just laugh that sort of thing away.
Maker, why was he even here? At least the Wardens could hold their own against this thing without wanting to collapse into a quivering puddle of terror. Jowan just wasn't cut out for this! It was a tier above him, and it proved without doubt that the only reason they had even brought him was...
...oh! The ritual!
Jowan did a quick check for his bag, where his grimoire was stored, only to find that he no longer had it on his person. No surprise, with how much everyone had been thrown around in the last ten minutes.
(Speaking of which, the demon had now sauntered into the crater and picked up a dazed Alistair by his shield arm. It then wrenched him around so hard that the pop of the Templar's shoulder dislocating could be heard a hundred feet away. Alistair grit his teeth around a scream.)
Jowan searched the cavern, and found the shape of the bag among a pile of rocks, where he'd been blasted by Kazar's opening attacks. Jowan scampered over the tumbled terrain toward it.
The Kazar-demon lurched and dropped the Templar as an arrow hit home in its throat. He then tore the offending shaft out and casually propelled a boulder the size of a horse at Meila, who had shot it. The elf ducked away from the attack and disappeared among the rubble, and the demon turned its attention back to Alistair. Who had, rather amazingly, climbed to his feet again, despite a completely useless and limp left arm.
"That all you've got?" Alistair said cheekily through a split lip, and Jowan's hands were shaking in empathetic fear as he knelt by his bag to dig out his grimoire. "And here I thought Pride Demons were supposed to be powerful." Sweet Andraste, Kazar was going to obliterate him.
The demon growled and straight-up smacked him, and the Templar skidded a good fifteen feet along the floor of the crater. Felicity's healing magic was a pretty much constant aura around Alistair, but Jowan suspected Kazar didn't mind it much. After all, the Templar surviving longer meant he would suffer more before the demon inevitably killed him.
Jowan's hands tightened convulsively around the grimoire. This thing was all the worst parts of the friend he'd watched grow up, like someone had reached into his friend and pulled out just the darker, harsher parts of his personality, and then had molded a being out of only that. This was the part of Kazar that the Templars had always seen, and that their peers had always accused Kazar of one day becoming.
But Jowan knew there was more to the elf than that. He'd known the Kazar who hadn't been able to stop from sniggering as they snuck out after curfew to hide Enchanter Leorah's staff in the storeroom. He'd known the Kazar who would get squirrelly about halfway through his schoolwork and would use tiny fires to burn pictures into the undersides of all the desks. He'd known the Kazar who, when they were alone, would sometimes stare up at the high windows in the top of the Tower, and Jowan would remember with heartbreaking clarity that his friend didn't know anything about the world outside the Tower beyond stolen glimpses of sky through those windows.
That Kazar was in this monster somewhere. Jowan had to believe that. He was in there, and the world needed him back.
He knelt beside the bag and flipped through to the applicable page. There it was: the ritual. The only thing that might actually stop his current rampage, let alone save him. While the battle (that was to say, methodical curb-stomp of Alistair while the archers shot ineffectually at him) continued above him, Jowan studied the spell.
The Warden party hadn't passed any lyrium veins on the way here, and they certainly couldn't go on a mining expedition with a Pride Demon on the loose. That meant blood magic, and that meant sacrificing someone. He didn't want to, any more than he'd wanted to sacrifice Lady Isolde (the woman had given him a job. He'd liked her!). But what was the other option? Letting Kazar kill them all? Someone would die no matter what. Jowan just didn't want that someone to be his best friend. Jowan just couldn't fail him again; he just couldn't.
Not that they were likely to defeat Kazar, at this rate.
"You begin to bore me, Templar," the demon sneered, at some point between kicking Alistair down (again) and blasting the two archers with fire. "Better make this interesting. Amell's next."
Kazar would never forgive himself if he went through with this. Jowan would certainly never forgive himself, that was for sure. Any death Kazar caused in this state was on Jowan's conscience, because Kazar would never have been pushed this far if not for his actions. It should be Jowan's price to pay, not anyone else's.
And then, with a flash of insight, Jowan realized what he had to do. He stooped over the diagram for the ritual, moving his finger along a few key lines.
"Don't... you..." Alistair coughed weakly and tried to get to his feet... and failed. Either Felicity was getting too exhausted to heal, or he was really taking that much damage.
"Don't I dare? Is that what you're trying to say? I couldn't quite hear it around the sound of your failure." The Pride Demon stomped on the ground, casting an earthquake spell into it that rocked the entire chamber. Jowan ducked his head against the ensuing shower of pebbles from above. "Don't you understand yet? I am as a god. I can do anything I want. And now, I want to kill you." Its maw spread in a shark's grin, and its reached out with a clawed hand one last time. "And you can't imagine how long I've wanted to do this."
Then, the chamber rocked again... and, judging by the demon's surprised stumble, this time it didn't come from the abomination. The ground at the center of the crater, where Alistair and the Pride Demon were, started stirring and trembling.
Then, a blast of spirit magic slammed upward from below the pair, and Jowan ducked behind a boulder to avoid the shower of dirt and stone as the center of the crater seemed to explode. A moment later, an unfamiliar, terrifying roar filled the chamber, accompanied by the beating of massive wings and the acrid stench of darkspawn, and Jowan realized with horror that he was in the presence of an archdemon.
He was so, so very over his head.
There were other noises (Felicity shouting Alistair's name, the Pride Demon roaring back, the blast of a bolt of lightning) but Jowan was mostly concerned with not getting eaten by the gigantic Taint monster. He clutched his book and ran back, into the relative safety of a crevice in the cavern wall.
Looking out over the cavern from behind cover, the battle was... a little awesome to watch, actually. The Pride Demon seemed to take the archdemon's existence personally, and slung destructive spells up at the monster with wild abandon, but the archdemon roared and flapped across the relatively narrow confines of the chamber, dodging and flying through the attacks. Jowan caught sight of Meila landing an arrow right in its shoulder, and it spat a spirit blast at her that sent her to the ground, right as a fiery vortex came into existence on top of it. The archdemon flapped out of it before the firestorm properly formed, then swooped down on the demon and slammed it into the ground. The dragon reared back and blasted the demon with its breath weapon at close range, and the Pride Demon shrieked.
Then, an arrow sprouted between scales in its throat, and Leliana ducked behind a stalagmite as it roared. As it did so, Meila shot it in the nostril from another position. The dragon's head swiveled angrily.
Then, the Pride Demon released a blast of its own, detonating a fiery explosion right on top of itself that was strong enough to throw the archdemon in the air, and the demon deeper into the ground. Jowan winced as he saw Alistair's limp form thrown clear over the lip of the crater. Felicity's form could be seen breaking cover to sprint toward him a moment later.
The archdemon roared, flapping wildly to gain altitude to the top of the cavern. Then, with an angry shriek, the dragon swooped around the chamber, released a final spirit blast at the archers, and then swooped into a tall side passage and out of sight.
The silence after the archdemon's departure was stark, and it took Jowan a couple seconds to remember how to walk. Only as he heard Felicity's panicked, "Come on, come on!" did he remember that there were things to do.
He stumbled out of his hiding spot, daring to climb the rubble to peer into the deepened crater. Kazar's form was there, returned to its small, elfy shape, and not moving. For a moment, Jowan feared that he was too late, and his friend was dead.
Then, Kazar's head twitched to the side and he groaned, and a different fear took hold. Not dead. Unconscious. And waking up again pretty quickly, from the sounds of it.
Jowan slipped back away from the crater, winding toward where Felicity stooped over Alistair, looking wan and terrified as she poured healing magic into the Templar with uncalculated abandon. Alistair looked far more unconscious than Kazar was, and oh my, there was a lot blood pooling around him. His skin had a newly-charred look, though Felicitys healing seemed to be closing the worst of it.
The other mage's gaze snapped up as he stopped next to them. "Jowan! Help me set his shoulder!"
"There's no time. Kazar's unconscious. We won't get another chance."
"What are you talking about?" she squeaked. "Alistair's hurt."
"The ritual? The reason we're here?" He held up his grimoire. "We have to do it now."
At this point, Leliana appeared with a limping Meila from around a pile of rubble. "But we don't have any lyrium," the bard said.
Meila fixed him with a steady gaze. "You intend to use blood magic."
Sure enough, Felicity's eyes widened, and Jowan fought not to panic. She was going to refuse. He needed her for this. One mage couldn't do it alone.
"I modified the ritual," Jowan blurted, before she could protest. "A sacrifice isn't necessary anymore."
"You... did?" Felicity asked uncertainly, her hands still fluttering distractedly over Alistair's pulse points. "How is that possible?"
"Blood magic." He forced a shrug. "I had a long time to work on it on the way here."
Leliana was looking at him, her face sad, but she didn't say anything. Could she guess what he was planning? Why didn't she call him out on it?
It didn't matter, because she didn't, and Felicity was too distracted by Alistair's battered form to give his words much thought.
"You must do it quickly, falon," Meila said, digging through her pack and pulling out a few vials. "He speaks truth. Da'lethallin will not be neutralized for long. We will take care of our fallen fellow."
Leliana plucked a vial out of Meila's hands. "And I will go dose Kazar with magebane. We will see if it will keep him out longer, no?"
Shakily, Felicity nodded. She looked exhausted, with heavy hollows under her eyes. Small surprise with how intense that fight had been. She'd been healing and shielding constantly. Jowan was honestly a little impressed; who'd known that Felicity, who could barely throw a bolt of lightning across a table at the Circle Tower, could be such an asset during a battle?
It reminded him that the Grey Wardens were a cut above everyone else, merely by virtue of being what they were. The world needed the Wardens, a lot more than it needed Jowan. That thought gave the mage resolve.
Jowan helped Felicity to her feet, and Meila knelt to take her place. The elf began applying potions and old-fashioned first aid to Alistair. Felicity gave her beau one last lip-biting look before she let Jowan pull her away.
They found a relatively flat spot, and Jowan began drawing the lines on the ground. It didn't help that his hands were shaking.
He could do this. He had to do this.
"You're certain this will work?" Felicity asked. "We don't need a sacrifice or lyrium?"
"No, it should be fine." He concentrated hard on making sure the blood lines soaked in deep, just so he didn't have to look up and meet her eyes. Oh, he'd certainly modified the ritual… but not to keep it from needing its power source. That was impossible, and he was grateful Felicity didn't want to know enough about blood magic to know that.
While he set up, Jowan explained what Felicity would need to do. She need only stand in a particular spot, and he would do the work of the ritual itself, but confronting the demon in the Fade was up to her. By the time she'd assured him that she knew the theory of navigating the Fade perfectly fine after her experience with the Sloth Demon at the Circle, he was done drawing the lines. Now, all there was to do was to apply the magic, and then…
Jowan took a steadying breath as he moved to take his position. It was better this way. It skipped all the arguing, and the looks, and… yeah. This was the best way.
Felicity fidgeted with her sleeves, casting glances over at where they'd left Alistair with Meila, and then moved into the spot on the circle that was hers. It seemed only a short time since Kazar had stood in front of him like this, eager to go into the Fade and put a stop to the undead. Felicity did not look nearly so eager.
"Are you ready?" Jowan asked her, but he was asking himself too.
She nodded. "I'll have to be."
Jowan nodded, drawing his dagger from his belt. Was he ready?
He couldn't think about it. Kazar had called him a coward… his shoulder still ached where the elf's bolt had hit it. Jowan was a coward about a lot of things. This thing, though… no, he wouldn't be a coward about this.
He dug his dagger deep into his palm, feeling the magic surge out of him.
He'd made his mistakes. He'd shown himself for a blood mage in front of Irving and Greagoir, and left Kazar and poor Lily behind. He'd put his trust in Howe and Loghain: the men who had rescued him from the Templars. He'd betrayed his friend and enabled him to become… this thing.
He couldn't change what he'd done, but he could make it right. He just had to trust that this would be the push Kazar needed to find himself again. It was the least he could do.
Jowan wove his magic around Felicity. He felt the tugging sensation as the ritual settled over him. He ignored the feeling, instead making sure everything was set. The spell had to run on its own once it was kicked off, so he made extra certain that the magic was strong and tight.
And then, when he was ready, and Felicity was looked at him with concern over how long it was taking, and the Dalish elf was across the room just looking at him, her eyes grim but admiring… Jowan set it off, and both mages were swallowed up in hot white light.
It burned through Jowan, sharp and hot and final.
He was a coward in a lot of things, and maybe not telling anyone that he was the sacrifice made him a coward in this too. But at least he could go to his grave knowing he'd done something right for a change.
His final thought was a prayer that it would be enough.