Alistair's preparedness and his warning buy them little more than a moment. It is enough time for Savreen to pull her swords from their sheathes and arm herself, but only barely, and she moves like lightning on the wind. Talvinder, though, is frozen as the Darkspawn crest a nearby hill. She's heard the stories—they all have—but this, seeing them for the first time, is different. It's worse.
They've all heard about the monsters, twisted remnants of people fallen to the Blight: humans deformed into hurlocks, dwarves mangled into genlocks, elves and vashoth decayed to the more elusive but no less horrible shrieks and ogres. All unique and terrible in their own ways, all capable of dealing death, inexorable. The creatures have been described as walking corpses, monstrosities, terrors, things which haunted Tali's childhood nightmares. But the smell had never factored into the stories. It yanks at memories and pulls them to Tali's mind, unbidden, and suddenly she sees the horse, her older brother's horse, who, when she was thirteen, had broken its leg. The healing had gone wrong, and the flesh around the break went rancid, gangrenous, dead and horrible and poisonous. The horse hadn't survived. That smell is the closest she can come to identifying the Darkspawn, but even it seems to pale in comparison to the way these monsters smell. She has no frame of reference for it, even as she thinks of putrid meat and the tangy rot of congealed blood. It is somehow worse than both, more evil and sickening, like the very scent of death made real.
As the band of hurlocks and genlocks rushes closer, the smell grows more powerful, almost overwhelming. The Darkspawn move in loping strides both jerky and awkward, but relentless nevertheless. At this distance, Tali can see the horrid, mottled color of their flesh, and it appears less like skin than living mildew. It strikes her with absurd horror, the way their skin seems leathery from the rot and putrefaction, the curing of not quite dead, not quite living hide. She thinks it might feel like her horse's saddle, if she touched it. Milky, spoiled eyes greet her gaze, empty save for hunger, and that hunger—
A hurlock roars, and the teeth make Talvinder want to close her eyes. Rows upon rows of jagged teeth, some blackened and decaying, others swaddled in the fleshy remains of the Darkspawn's last meal, all sharp and hideous. She's vaguely aware of time moving, stretched and slowed now as it had been during the battle in the hall at Highever. She knows that she has to move, has to pull her sword from its sheath, has to bring her shield up in front of her, but the Hurlock is closing in and she can't stop looking at his teeth.
"Tali! On your flank!" Savreen's voice reaches her through the fog and Tali snaps her head up in time to see the genlock rogue leap out of the grass behind her. In a flash, her instinct comes back, and she unsheathes her sword and brings it up to block the Genlock's blade in one fluid, strong motion. The dagger, pitted and old, clangs dully against the Cousland sword, and the genlock snarls, more animal than anything else, vicious and ready to kill, to bite, to eat. To eat me. But Tali can see an opening in its guard, and she takes advantage of it. She steps back and pulls her shield down, slips it onto her arm, and slams it into the side of the genlock's head. It stumbles, dazed, and Tali swirls her sword back around and directly into its throat.
As the genlock falls off her blade, Tali can hear Jory's panicked shouts, and she spins about wildly to find him. Her eyes fall first on Sav, her twin blades glinting as she spins out of the reach of a nearby hurlock. It's normally hard not to watch her as she dances through combat, but the graceful and terrible beauty of her movements is lost on Talvinder in this moment. Instead, her gaze slips to the side, where she sees Jory, stumbling backwards under a flurry of axe blows from a huge hurlock. He lets out another shout as he falls into a marshy pool, and Tali leaps forward, running full tilt towards him just as the hurlock raises its battle axe above its head.
The newness of combat, real combat, has no time to distract her as she barrels into the hurlock, slamming her armored shoulder into its open side. Both she and the hurlock stumble backward, and then it rights itself and turns to face her. She's bought Jory the time to stand, but now it's she who has the Darkspawn's attention. Its eyes, decayed and clouded like a week-old fish, focus on Tali with effort, and their glare is wild and scorching. Strangely, it steels her. This thing will not best me.
She digs her heel into the dirt behind her, widening and stabilizing her stance, and then brings her shield in front of her body. The Darkspawn, as huge as it may be, can still die. She watches as it lugs its war-axe back over its shoulder, getting ready to strike one massive blow, and at the last minute she pushes herself forward into a roll. The hurlock's movement brings it stumbling past her, and suddenly she's behind the creature, and its legs are within perfect, easy reach of her blade. Jory is standing now, and looking nervously at Tali as though unsure of what to do. But there's no need for him to do anything as Tali slices through the weak point of the hurlock's armor in the fleshy backs of its knees. It screeches, the sound harsh and croaking, tugging at vocal cords that are nearly rotted through, and its legs give way as Tali leaps to her feet, pulls back her blade, and with a cry and a dull thwunk, cleaves its head in two.
The reality of the split skull in front of her shakes Talvinder, and she pauses, glancing up at Jory with slack jaw and wide eyes. The man is pale, his hands shaking even as he grips his greatsword tight enough to strangle it. And, to her surprise, when Tali looks down at the sword in her own grip, she finds her hands shaking, too.
"That's all of them. Everyone all right?" Alistair's voice startles her, and Tali hurriedly yanks her sword from the wreck of the Darkspawn's head. Without the blade supporting it, the body lurches and falls to the side, sliding into the muddy, marshy water with a small splash. The movement seems to capture Alistair's attention, and he looks from the Darkspawn to Talvinder's viscera-coated sword to Jory's sopping wet limbs and then back to the ruined skull of the Darkspawn, just cresting the surface of the shallow brackish pool. A strange look passes over his eyes, and Talvinder is almost sure she sees the tips of his ears redden before he turns around and begins busying himself with pulling out the vials given to him by Duncan.
As Alistair goes about filling the vials with the congealed black sludge of Darkspawn blood, Tali leans down, trying to ignore the bodies around them, and dips her sword in the water before wiping it off on the grass. Most of the blood and viscera now clear of the blade, and most of the shaking in her limbs stilled, she sheathes her sword and then looks around. There must be a dozen Darkspawn corpses, maybe more. What does this bode for the fate of her brother? The fate of her cousin? It pulls at her gut, and she has to stop herself before she imagines Sikander in the sights of a genlock bow, Fergus beneath a hurlock axe. With another look around—anything to distract her from what's inside her head—she meets Jory's red-cheeked face. He stands near her for a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and then mumbles out his thanks and turns away. He's replaced by Savreen, who still pants slightly as she wipes down her own blades and then sheathes them. A moment of silence passes, and then Sav steps a bit closer to Tali, reaches up slightly, and drops a hand onto her cousin's shoulder.
"You did well." Tali takes the compliment uncomfortably, eyes cast away from Sav, but still, a smile tugs at her mouth, appreciative in spite of herself. It comes to her that she could take this moment; glancing around, she sees Jory and Daveth standing maybe fifteen feet from them, absorbed in their own post-fight activities. Alistair is still busy filling the vials from the cooling Darkspawn bodies. It would be easy, so easy, all she would need to do is to apologize— "They're worse than the stories, aren't they?" Tali's head snaps back to look at Sav as she takes her hand from Tali's shoulder, and for the first time, Tali notices that her cousin seems thrown, shaken, her demeanor off. Sav's eyes flit across the landscape, seeking and nervous. When Tali looks down, she sees Sav's hands trembling, just like hers. She drops her eyes to her own fingers, and thinks about the sword, about the Darkspawn, and the feeling of flesh and bone giving way beneath her blow. Worse, she remembers her thoughts from just a moment ago, the fear that it may be too late to save even Sikander and Fergus. Something tells her that Sav fears the same. Tali breathes in sharply, and then forces out a quip with the only words that will come to her mind.
"Surprised no one ever mentioned the smell, really." In response, Sav snorts out a laugh, dry and nearly humorless, but when she turns to Tali with a wry smile, the worst of the trembling has stopped.
"Figures you would fixate on the smell, the way you avoided stable mucking with such prodigious talent." Tali wrinkles her nose, leaning into the exchange and trying to put the fight from her mind, to put everything from her mind. The hint of a laugh trickles from her lips, and she rubs the back of her neck as she thinks of how to respond. She decides on a faint jab; Tali isn't ready to think more deeply. She wants something normal, something easy, despite how poorly something 'normal' or 'easy' fits with their current situation.
"You say that as though you didn't try to avoid it as well." Sav grins in response, though it doesn't reach her eyes.
"But you see, little cousin, the difference is that I actually did it when I was told, unlike some people." On reflex, reacting to the returned barb as effortlessly as she would have before it all, Tali gasps and raises a hand to her chest, feigning offense.
"My dear cousin, you wound me! I always did as I was told. Perhaps just a bit more slowly." Sav smiles for real now, and she reaches back out, this time fully wrapping an arm around her cousin's shoulders. Before she can speak, Alistair is calling them, pushing for the group to move. While his voice doesn't shatter the moment between Tali and Sav completely, Tali still feels the cold air of the present creep through the warm embrace of the past. The humor is gone, replaced by a bittersweet ache that threatens to turn her insides, force them from her mouth and make them visible for all to see. Sav shoots her one last look, squeezes her tight with the arm wrapped about her, and then turns, walking away from Tali and back to the group, back to the path. Tali sighs, closes her eyes, breathes in deeply, and then follows suit.
As the group continues through the Wilds, marsh turns to swamp, and trees spout from the water, the ground, the thick clumps of grasses, gnarled and beautiful and mostly old. It breaks Tali's heart when they come across one felled by jagged strokes of a Darkspawn's axe. At each and every sign that the Darkspawn have passed through, she can't help but glance back at Sav, consumed by thoughts of their only remaining family, wondering what her cousin thinks of their brothers' chances. Luckily, they've seen no blood, no remains of any scouting parties, nothing to suggest that Fergus and Sikander have come to ill—at least along this path, that is. They catch up to another band of Darkspawn near some crumbling Tevinter ruins. And another near the edge of a pond. And yet another in a grove of ancient Avvar statues. The fights are intense, terrifying, but when there's still no sign of her brother and cousin, Talvinder couldn't care less after they've ended.
When Alistair sets about filling the last of the vials, though, just after Sav and Tali have taken down the last genlock emissary in the shadow of a tribute to the ancient Avvar warrior Tyrdda, his face is grimmer, expression filled with a worry that already seems uncharacteristic from what little Tali knows of him. Cautiously, she approaches him, and carefully phrases her question.
"Is something worrying you?" She keeps her voice quiet, tone as calm as possible, but still he jumps, viscous, dark blood sloshing in the sealed vial in his hand as he shoots to his feet. Realizing a bit too late that it's just Tali, he sighs sheepishly.
"You mean aside from the hordes of murderous monsters?" As he speaks, he pulls a small cloth from a bag at his hip and carefully wraps the vial of blood before placing it into his pack with the others. Tali watches him, and she can't stop a small smirk and chuckle from escaping her at his response.
"I do, in fact, mean so." He's silent for a moment, as though deciding whether to answer, and Tali notices the tension arcing through his shoulders.
"There's more than we thought there would be. Duncan and the other Wardens, that is." Another pause, this time as he chews over his words, glancing at the others, who don't seem to be paying attention to them. "Obviously I don't want to worry anyone, but by now, I thought—we thought—that we'd have come across one, maybe two, scouting parties. Maybe ten Darkspawn in all. But instead we've found four raiding groups. It doesn't…it doesn't bode well, is all. But I'm sure Duncan will know more than I." Tali frowns as she processes the meaning behind Alistair's words, and, before she speaks, throws a glance back to Jory, Daveth, and Sav, trying to make sure they aren't listening in.
"You're saying there are too many of them here now, before the battle? Or too many of them here at all?" Alistair hesitates, brows knotting together at the center of his forehead. Gently, he turns Tali to face away from the others, casting another furtive glance behind them as he does so. When he speaks again, both of them looking out over the landscape of the Wilds, it's more hushed than before, more tense.
"I'm not sure if it's the second one, not yet, but I know there are already too many of them here this early before the battle. Our scouts suggested we were well ahead of the horde." He swallows and looks over at Tali, a bit of surprise in his eyes. It's as though he's only just realized how much he's revealing to her, someone he's only just met, someone who isn't even a Warden yet, and for a moment she worries that he'll stop talking. She returns his gaze, trying to speak without words, to tell him he can trust her, that she needs to know what's happening and what it means for her brother, and either it works, or Alistair has decided on his own that he trusts her, that she deserves to know. "It's not just that we need to hurry and find the treaties and get back to warn them that the Darkspawn are already massing. If we don't get the treaties and return to Ostagar soon, we might be trapped behind the first wave of the horde. There'd be no way to fight through them to rejoin the king's army and the Wardens, and who knows what would happen."
A faint chill trickles down Tali's spine and the air feels suddenly as though it's tripled in weight, bearing down on her shoulders and trying to shove her to the ground.
"But what about the others out here? The scouting parties—my brother, my cousin?" As the worry rises in her voice, Alistair does his best to reassure her, despite seeming unsure of how to do so, exactly.
"They're equipped for it. They were never meant to return for the battle, only to find higher ground and report on the horde's movements. They'll have provisions for at least a week, and they're in small enough groups to slip past undetected." He's right, she knows he is, he must be—he knows more about the goings on at Ostagar than she—and she tries to take a deep breath, to listen, to take his words and keep them in her mind. But it's hard. He watches her face, trying to track her emotions, it seems, and she folds them away and turns her mind back to the issue at hand.
"Do you think we'll be able to make it to the old outpost?" Slowly, Alistair nods, and as he opens his mouth to speak, there's a shout from Daveth.
"You finished flirting? Shouldn't we get going?" Tali turns to look at him, brows furrowed, unsure of his meaning, and then back to Alistair who, to her surprise, is red in the face. Alistair clears his throat, and when he speaks, his voice seems almost comically deep, confusing Tali even more.
"We were just discussing the path forward. Get ready to move." He walks away from her in a manner not quite brusque, but definitely hurried, and her brain whirls a bit longer before she catches Daveth's meaning. Now her cheeks heat, and she feels a frown set across her face. Flirting? At a time like this? Of all the ridiculous—
"Tali, come on. We've got to move." Sav's voice has the hint of a smile in it, and it furthers Tali's indignation. She jogs swiftly back to the group, grumbling a bit as she approaches her cousin.
"We weren't flirting," she mumbles to her, but it only makes Sav's faint smile turn into a grin.
"Oh, no, absolutely not." The indignation turns to real irritation, and as the group moves away from the small clearing and further into the swamplands of the Wilds, Tali snaps, trying to keep her voice quiet but almost certainly failing.
"Do you really think so little of me? That I would be flirting now, after everything that's happened to us?" A different heat spreads across her face and down her throat. At least no one has turned around. Sav looks a bit taken aback, eyes widening, brows gathering into a knot and mouth tilting into a small frown.
"Tali, I didn't mean—" She reaches a hand out, trying to set it on Tali's arm, as she did before, only a few moments ago, but Tali jerks away and speeds up her pace, putting distance between the two of them.
"I know what you meant." Guilt and humiliation vie for supremacy in her stomach. Tali knows there was no need to be so harsh. She knows almost immediately she should apologize, but something holds her back. Frustrated, she tries to shove the feeling down, to ignore it and just keep walking. She's laughed too often, far too often, smiled too much, repeated the same mistakes over and over without thinking on them. The thought of flirting, of being carefree in any way after all that's happened, with where they are right now, makes her feel so deeply angry at herself. But what makes it worse is that she knows she wants to, that she already finds something endearing about Alistair. And so instead of swallowing her pride, slowing down, and turning back to apologize to Savreen, she keeps walking, keeps stewing in the frustration and the self-disgust and the guilty desire to think of something other than the larder.
Tali tries to turn her mind to the landscape around her; after all, there are still plenty of Darkspawn out there. But besides the occasional birdsong or rustle, there seems to be little to suggest anything besides their small group is in this part of the Wilds. The trees and grasses around them are largely silent—at least for the moment, which doesn't last too long. After about a half hour more of walking, Tali can see the broken pillars of some building up ahead. Beneath their feet, the uneven ground of the swamp reveals in some places the ancient, neglected, and equally uneven stones of a disused road.
"This is it," Alistair calls back to the group. They are approaching the Warden outpost. Already quiet, this revelation forces them all into near silence—they might find anything there. The group slows, following Alistair's lead, and together they crouch behind whatever cover they can find. For a moment, Tali sees nothing. The space in front of the outpost's entrance is relatively small; there's a gentle hill that slopes up around it, flattening around the decrepit doorway, where the hints of old pavers peek through the grass. Then the sun glints dully off of hammered bronze through a pair of crumbling columns, and Tali can pick out the cruelly spiked and crudely shaped armor of a hurlock leader. An alpha, Alistair had called it earlier. After that, it's easy to see all the others, about seven in total, she thinks. When she glances over at Alistair, his large frame bundled up awkwardly behind a shrub, she can practically see the cogs spinning in his head. He turns, whistling softly to attract the attention of the others, and then motions a plan, or at least, that's what Tali thinks he's doing.
With excitable hands, moving almost too quickly for Tali to follow, Alistair points to Daveth and Jory and motions for them to move in from the right, then Tali and Sav, motioning for them to move from the left. Motioning to himself, it seems he plans to rush up from the middle, catching the Darkspawn off-guard. His fingers walk across the palm of his hand in a vague fashion, though, and Tali can't be totally sure that's what he means. But it isn't more than a split second after he's finished his strange series of hand motions before he slides his shield onto his arm and barrels forward, moving more quickly than he really should be able to given all his armor. Tali looks to Sav, who shrugs and unsheathes her swords, moving quickly to position and then joining Alistair in the fray.
The Darkspawn don't fall easily. The fight sends adrenaline coursing through Tali's veins, her limbs, her whole body with a fury. In twenty years, she's practiced plenty with her blade and shield, but the night Howe attacked—that was the first time she'd ever fought for real. Now, here, fighting yet more Darkspawn, she wonders when the fear of battle will fade, when it will feel normal, when she will be able to unsheathe her sword and angle her shield against a living, breathing thing and not be acutely aware of the wrongness, the strangeness of ending a life, even the life of a monster. But even with that feeling, with the unsettling awareness of life's balance against death, Tali and Sav move easily together, the product of years of sparring.
Sav moves so quickly she is barely there, twirling, blades spinning as she leaps in and out of reach of the Darkspawn. Tali moves and weaves between her and the first hurlock, pushing it back, off balance, landing flurries of blows on its shield, until its neck is exposed and Sav can run her blade across its throat. Time has stretched, taken forever to pass, but when the hurlock falls, curdled blood spurting from its neck, it's been barely a moment. Tali turns from the crumpled body just in time to deflect an oncoming arrow from a genlock, throwing her shield up with sheer luck, and then sprints across the small hill, taking the creature's head off in one clean swipe as it rushes to drop its bow and pull out two jagged knives. Back across the hill, Sav has taken down another hurlock, meanwhile Alistair stands, panting slightly, over the corpse of a hurlock that must have been headed toward Daveth and Jory. Yet another hurlock lies, armless and dying, on the ground behind him, and two more genlocks, both with Daveth's arrows and the marks of Jory's sword, are bent lifeless against a fallen pillar. It's silent for a heartbeat, and then Tali remembers—
"The alpha!" Alistair calls out as the clang of blades echoes across the hill. Tali turns, dread in her stomach, to see Sav's swords locked with the forgotten hurlock alpha. Her teeth are gritted as she pushes back against the huge two-handed sword bearing down on her, and Tali feels her body move, feels herself begin to sprint back toward her cousin, when, as though in slow motion, she watches Sav pull her blades back, twirl to the side—does the hurlock alpha's blade hit her there, in her ribs? Tali can't tell—and then she begins to fall, pain on her face, but with the last of her momentum, she slots the Cousland sword into the notch between the alpha's helmet and its armor, just there at its neck, and severs its spine.
Sav and the hurlock alpha hit the ground at almost the same moment, and Tali feels a scream ripping from her lips as she runs, terrified, to her cousin's side, squatting next to her, dropping her weapon, hands reaching out, fluttering over Sav's face, arms, seeking injuries. She remembers for a brief moment her mother's face in the hallway, her hands cool and dry and smelling of lotion, like butterfly wings across Tali's own skin as they sought wounds just as she does now. She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the memory from her sight, to focus instead on the present. Sav pants, a hand at her ribs and a pained expression on her face, but to Tali's relief, there's no blood.
"Caught on the thing's massive crossguard," she explains to Tali, "I'll be fine, just winded. It will bruise, but that's all." The words unsaid pull at Tali, her harsh retort from before pushing at her throat and the apologies begging to be let free. But if before wasn't the time, then even now, after such a close call, is absolutely not the time. Instead, Tali lets out a breath and, feeling the absolute inadequacy of it all, picks up and sheathes her sword, fixes her shield to her back, and offers her hands to Sav. It's as though Sav can see the pleading in the younger woman's eyes, and she smiles faintly, softly, almost sadly, before she reaches out and places her hands in Tali's, who pulls her up.
Savreen dusts herself off with a wince, takes a few breaths, and then wipes her swords before sheathing them. When the two of them turn back to the others, Alistair glances at them with a touch of worry, but relaxes when he sees no wounds. Tali notices now a small slice across his cheek, already clotting, but wicked looking. It will need taking care of when they have a moment. But now doesn't seem to be that moment, as Alistair, seeing they are all collected, turns to the ruins and beckons them through the doorway.
Inside the shell of the outpost, Tali can see the remnants of majesty. Broken statues of griffons litter small nooks around the entry hall, some covered by the long decayed remnants of the fallen roof. There are bundles of what appear to have at some point been weapons, now entangled with plants, many rusted far beyond any use. Columns have fallen across this room, what must have once been an entry hall, and in her mind's eye, Tali can see a room that seems larger than it is, lofty ceilings, torchlight bouncing between the columns and the statues and off the smooth stone floor. Then she steps on something and hears the clinking of stone against metal, and looks down to see a handful of dulled metal arrowheads, the shafts and fletching long gone.
As they wander the outpost, Tali is struck by the fact that it feels…not eerie, exactly, but sad, tired. The forgetting of this place, its abandonment, feels wrong. Dangerous. Ahead of her, Alistair searches for something—the treaties Duncan sent them after, surely. He pokes gingerly at piles of grass with his sword, seeming unsure of where to look. Tali approaches him, and as she does, she can hear him muttering to himself.
"A single chest, you'll be able to find it. Easy. How hard can it be, Alistair? You volunteered, after all!" A bee, small and buzzing, flies past his face, and he frantically swats at it, his nose wrinkling up as he jumps out of its path. Tali can't help but laugh at that, and it catches his attention, draws his eyes to her. He meets her gaze for a second, and then almost immediately turns away. Tali thinks she can see pink in his ears again, though why, she isn't sure. "Right, we're looking for a chest. It should still be intact, so you'll…you'll know it when you see it," Alistair calls to all of them, still looking away from Tali.
They all split apart slightly as they scour the ruins, searching for just one intact chest, which, to Tali, seems an impossibility. With the way the outpost has decayed, how could anything remain untouched by the passage of time? She approaches a darkened corner of the entry hall, where a half-crumbled archway forms a narrow passage into a smaller room off to the side. Stooping, Tali peers inside. The roof here is still intact, but barely, and the darkness obscures most of what she can see, but she can feel something crackling in the air. Decaying bookshelves fill the room, filled with books that have long turned to dirt, giving off a powerful scent of mildew, and a few wooden chests are splintering and rotting away into nothing. But when she looks closer, she sees a chest that stands out slightly, less broken than the rest, and it seems that the crackling she feels is magic surrounding it. But it feels weak, frayed, somehow.
"Alistair, I think I've found something." Tali leans back, out of the archway, and calls Alistair over. The others look her way as well, and all of them head in her direction. Gingerly, Alistair enters the room, as though afraid that even touching the ground will bring the structure down around him. Tali points the chest out to him, and he steps towards it, moves to open it with bated breath. His hands seem to dispel the weak remnants of whatever magic had protected the chest, Warden blood breaking through the seals and silencing the crackling in the air, but when he opens the chest, there's nothing there. Alistair groans, and the rest of the group deflates with disappointment. Frustration writ across his features, Alistair backs up and away as the flutter of a bird's wings breaks their disappointed silence.
"Maybe it's in another chest, somewhere. There must be more rooms. We should keep looking." His voice says that he's unconvinced of his own thoughts, discouraged, but they have no choice but to keep on looking anyway. They are about to turn and split up again, all of them, when a voice echoes throughout the ruined hall.
"Well, well. What have we here?"