127. Obstructions and Complications
About a day's walk out of Denerim, they hit a roadblock.
This was a literal one, a barricade erected across the road where it went through a narrow ravine, so that they would have to backtrack several hours to go around. The dozen men in their path were dressed in the colors of Loghain's men, and, judging by the way they all stood and drew their weapons as the five approached, they recognized the party as Wardens.
"Stop and turn back, in the name of the regent," one of the men snapped.
"You've got to be kidding me," Alistair grumbled. "Would it help if we asked nicely? Said 'pretty please'?"
"We have orders direct from Loghain to intercept any suspicious figures who might sabotage the Landsmeet. You are suspicious. Turn back."
"Sabotage? Are you serious?"
Felicity laid a hand on Alistair's arm and sent a calming spell through him, and he gave her a look.
"I do not think they will see reason," Leliana said, too softly for the soldiers to hear, and the Wardens all gathered in to speak amongst themselves. "They are obviously working out of Loghain's pockets. If we do not turn around, they will fight us."
"Let them," Meila said. "We will meet them blow for blow."
"Um, I don't know if you've noticed, Meila," Alistair said, "but they outnumber us two to one."
"We've handled worse odds."
"Right, and someone always gets the stuffing kicked out of them in the process. Usually me. So, no, I think I'd rather take a couple hours out of my day to go around them."
Felicity shook her head. "I doubt that will do much good." At Alistair's questioning look, she explained. "It's a barricade, obviously set here to stop us and our supporters from entering Denerim. Loghain is a tactician; he would not have set just this one block, but rather a perimeter. All paths leading to the city will have the same results."
"So we're stuck." Alistair sighed. "I can't believe I'm saying this... but, Kazar, do you feel like blasting our way through?"
Kazar, who had remained quiet through the exchange (it would have been strange, once, but it was the case more often than not since the demon), turned to regard the barricade thoughtfully. "I could make a path. That's an awful lot of steel coming at us, though."
Seeing their attention, the leader of the soldiers cleared his throat pointedly. "Are you done? Doesn't seem it should be that hard a choice."
"Well, that settles it," Alistair whispered with a snort. "On my signal?"
They all nodded and broke apart, approaching the barricade. Felicity kept tight to Alistair's back, suspecting he would need the added support of her magic if he was going to make a target of himself. Which, being Alistair, he always did.
"It is a little bit difficult," Alistair said, not seeming aware of the bows raised in his direction from behind the wall. "We were trying to figure out whether you were really being paid that much, or whether you're just stupid. You see, we're Grey Wardens, and that gives us political immunity to just about everything Loghain can throw at us. That means you've got no grounds to touch us, and doing so could mean trouble with Weisshaupt. And trust me, no one wants trouble with Weisshaupt."
The leader faltered. "You're bluffing."
"Nope. Also, FIRE!"
A fireball and scattering of arrows burst from behind them, and a section of the wooden barricade burst into flames.
The soldiers were quick to react. The half with bows released their strings, but Felicity timed a concussive burst around her and Alistair that bounced them away. Then, the soldiers bearing melee weapons charged, and Alistair ran ahead to meet them.
There were times when Felicity had to fight down the urge to see Alistair as a knight in shining armor. He was far from perfect, after all, and there was usually too much dried gore on his armor to make it shine. And yet, at times like this, when he charged into impossible odds to protect his weaker companions, Felicity couldn't help but think that this was the sort of man that people wrote fairytales about.
"Felicity? Oof! Little help?"
Well, excepting the constant string of batterings and injuries, anyway.
She set to doing what she did best, healing a hammer blow here, an arrow wound there. She stayed tight to Alistair's back, and the warrior did a commendable job keeping them off her, though she did need to release the odd spirit bolt to discourage them.
She had been paying so much attention to Alistair and herself, however, that she lost track of how Kazar and the archers were doing. She hadn't even been aware of soldiers slipping past Alistair's front line until the soldiers still standing backed off, everything brought to a standstill.
Felicity had to peer over Alistair's shoulder to see why. The leader of the soldiers—half of his face burned off, much to Kazar's credit—was holding his sword to Meila's throat, the elf pinned solidly against another soldier's chestplate. Leliana and Kazar were frozen with indecision, bow and staff quivering respectively.
"You should have turned around," he said.
"You can't kill her," Felicity blurted, moving to scurry around Alistair, but his hand snaked out and grabbed her upper arm, keeping her safely back. "Legally, you can't. This is a Landsmeet; our two forces are under truce."
"Tell that to the men you just killed," he sneered.
"You attacked us first, nitwit," Kazar said. Lightning raced up and down his staff, but he did not seem able to fire.
"That is not the story my men will tell, once you are all dead. We'll start with the dirty knife-ears."
Kazar's magic flared disconcertingly, so that the enemy soldiers nearby could be seen shifting in discomfort.
"Say that word again," he dared, and Felicity froze as she heard a low dissonance in his voice.
"What's the matter? Don't like being reminded of your inferiority, knife-ears?" The soldier smirked, pressing the blade in. Meila did not flinch, but Felicity saw the blood it drew. "Useless moochers, all of you. You were better off as slaves."
Leliana hissed, "How dare you!"
She could not see Kazar from where she stood, but Alistair and Felicity could, and Felicity could feel his grip on her arm tighten as he registered the sight of the red aura at the same time she did. Red cracks of light spread across the younger mage's skin, and though she could not see from her position, she suspected his eyes were glowing equally red.
This couldn't be possible. Had another demon found him? Or had the same one regenerated and come back for more?
The leader of the soldiers, at least, had the good sense to look worried by this development. He stared at Kazar. "Stay back!"
"Better off as slaves?" Kazar said, and there was definitely a demonic dissonance in his voice. "Let's see a slave do this!" He threw his arms out, and the ravine around and above them started rumbling and groaning. The ground shook, throwing the human off Meila, and the Dalish promptly twisted and extricated herself from her captor's grip.
Despite the trembling, Leliana's arrow pierced the leader's eye, and that instantly broke morale. As rock dust rained upon them, the other soldiers threw down their weapons and ran.
Alistair's jaw was tight. "Felicity, how stable is the ravine above us right now?"
"What?"
"If I smite Kazar, will it hold?"
Felicity blinked, surprised Alistair had thought to check. Then again, given the near cave-in down in the Deep Roads, they were all aware of Kazar's destructive power. She looked up above them, studying the sheer rock faces above them. A couple cracks, but nothing substantial. "It should hold."
Alistair nodded and reached out a hand, and Felicity felt the pulse of a smite around Kazar.
The elf stumbled and fell, the red light immediately flickering out. Felicity and Alistair approached cautiously, and she noticed that Leliana and Meila stayed back, watching the younger mage warily. Alistair did not even let Felicity get too close, stopping her four paces from him as the elf got his hands and knees under him.
"Kazar?" Felicity tried.
"What... was that?" Kazar gasped at the ground.
"We were about to ask you the same question," Alistair said tightly.
Kazar looked up, his eyes wide. "I didn't... it's not..." he swallowed and sat up on his knees, and his frightened eyes sought and met Felicity's. "It was me." He dropped his head into his hands. "It wasn't a demon... it was me."
Alistair held Felicity where she was, but that didn't stop Meila from kneeling down beside Kazar and laying a comforting hand to his back.
"Meila..." Alistair said warningly.
"I think he's telling the truth," Felicity posited carefully. "He and the Pride Demon were very tightly entwined. We managed to extricate him, but it may be that it could not be a clean break." They were all looking at her questioningly. She took a breath to collect her thoughts. "Think of it like this: Kazar and the demon were two different ingredients... say Kazar was a seed and the demon a leaf. They were ground up with a pestle and poured into one pot, then boiled in water to create the new creation: the abomination. What we did in the Fade was essentially run the potion through a sifter to separate the bits of seed from the rest of the potion. However, the fact remains that the seeds remain ground up and cannot be rebuilt, and the essence of the leaves was given time and treatment to soak in, and cannot be removed without destroying the seeds altogether."
"You're saying," Alistair said, "that parts of the demon soaked into Kazar?"
"I'm saying that there are bits of him that may have been mixed too tightly to truly seperate. We did what we could to distinguish them in the Fade, but some of it may have been... irreversible."
Kazar swayed where he sat, pale. "So there's no way to get it out? I'm going to have these... pieces of demon in me forever?"
Felicity bit her lip and nodded, scrambling to come up with something to comfort the boy, but unable to devise a solution.
Kazar's head dropped back into his hands, and he started tugging on his hair. "I thought it was my imagination... that I was remembering the Pride Demon... but it's me? I'm never getting away from it? Fuck..."
"Kazar..." Felicity ached for him, wanting to fix it, but no amount of knowledge or magic could. Some things, once broken, could not be returned to the way they were before the break.
Alistair took a breath, and in a more soothing voice than she would have expected asked, "Kazar, we need to know. Is this dangerous?"
"I don't know," the elf mumbled into his wrists. "I don't want to hurt anyone, but if I'm part demon..."
"A very, very small part," Felicity said quickly.
"It's still a demon!" Kazar was shaking, but a soothing string of Elvish from Meila had him raising his head and looking at all of them. "Alistair, if I... transform, or something? You've gotta just take me out, okay? I don't... want to be that thing again."
Alistair nodded his head gravely. "I promise." Then, after a pause, he cracked a wan smile. "But only if you really, really deserve it. Don't think you're getting out of stopping the Blight that easily."
Kazar's laugh was broken, but existent, and Felicity took Alistair's hand and squeezed it gratefully. He squeezed back.
"We'd better get moving," Leliana said after a few moments of pensive silence. "The ones that ran away will tell their superiors about us."
They all pulled themselves together. Meila helped pull Kazar to his feet, and Leliana retrieved his twisted staff.
Felicity, for her part, did not remove her hand from Alistair's, even as they resumed their journey down the road.