peopleofthedas | Blood Wound Chapter 14

Title: Sometimes I miss the Circle...
Words: 2000
Characters: Alim, Anders, Nathaniel, Sigrun, Oghren, Justice, Varel
Summary: A trip to the Blackmarsh. Sunshine and roses!

"He was married?" Alim resisted the urge to groan. The letter had arrived that morning and Varel had woken him to let him know the contents. "Maker's Breath - I wanted to deal with the caravans…"

"Perhaps you could manage a trip to the Blackmarsh first, Commander? Truly we need to know more about these darkspawn. And there are no caravans traveling along the route any longer, not after the last attacks."

"We need those supplies," Alim said, resting his head in one hand. The woman - her name was Aura - wrote eloquently, all but pleading for news of her husband. Still, the Blackmarsh was not far, and it was possible… "Maker damn it all, Varel, nothing is ever simple." If they had more wardens, he could send some to the Wending Wood at the same time, but as it was he wasn't going anywhere without all of them at his back, not at the moment.

"Indeed not, Commander," Varel said with a small smile. "Which is it, ser?"

"We'll go to the blighted Blackmarsh," he said, throwing down the letter and letting a snort of disgust escape him. "Money is only money after all. It's not as though it does anything useful, like… I don't know, feeding us or making armour or anything. Send a letter to Alistair, ask him for a cash advance."

"The King is unlikely to have the coin to spare…"

"I'm well aware of that, Varel. But it won't hurt to let him know we're in need."

"As you say, Commander."

They were on the road in under two hours.

"There's an awful lot of walking involved in this job," Anders said.

"You're more used to running, I take it?" Alim said.

"Ha bloody ha. That was actually a roundabout way of saying thank you for my new boots."

"Like them now, do you?"

"I think they're rather dashing, don't you?"

"If this is a way to make me admire your legs, don't bother. You're outshone there and you know it."

"Are they always like this?" Nathaniel asked Oghren. The dwarf and the noble had reached an accommodation of sorts, and Alim was grateful.

"You should have been with us during the Blight," Oghren said, chuckling. "Him and the pike-twirler were ten times worse."

"Pike twirler?"

"He means King Alistair," Alim said. "Oghren insists he used to spend hours practicing pike twirling when we were at camp. I personally never witnessed it."

"Not for want of trying, hur hur…"

"Please tell me you don't mean what I think you mean," Anders said.

"Pike twirling's very difficult," Sigrun piped up. "He would have needed to practice, if he really wanted to do it well."

Alim blinked.

"You're a duster girl," Oghren said, his voice incredulous. "Don't tell me you've never…"

"Oh… you were using innuendo were you?" Sigrun's voice was so bright and innocent that Alim could barely repress a chuckle. "I've heard about that. We couldn't afford it in dust town."

"By the tits of the ancestors, woman, you don't have to pay to use innuendo…"

"Don't you? I thought it was just fancy talk for nobles and warrior castes…"

"Oghren, she's pulling your beard," Anders said, laughing. Alim grinned. It was good to be on the road. Good to be surrounded by people he liked and trusted. Good to have a purpose.

When they reached the Blackmarsh, it was dark.

"Great," Anders said. "Deep dark forest. Howling wolves. And don't tell me you can't feel the tears in the veil. Why are we here again?"

"To find a brother warden, Anders," Alim said.

"I'm scared," Anders said. "Hold me?"

"Don't make offers you don't want to fulfill," Alim said.

"Who says I don't want to fulfill it?"

"If you're that keen for sex, I'm sure Oghren will oblige."

"Are you rejecting me Commander?"

"Maker's breath, Anders, shut up!"

"Elf-lips spent the last two years sleeping with an assassin, Sparklefingers," Oghren said. "And don't look at me like that, I wouldn't touch you with a ten day dead nug."

"Sometimes I miss the circle," Anders sighed.

"There are darkspawn about," Alim said as they started forward. "Can you others sense them yet?"

Anders nodded, as did Oghren, but Sigrun and Nathaniel shook their heads. That was to be expected - it had taken him a few weeks to recognise what the feeling was. "Keep working on it," he told the two rogues. "It's a necessary skill."

Werewolves. Blight wolves. Sylvans. Darkspawn.

"Is the surface always this dangerous?" Sigrun asked, as the last of the Childer grubs fell to her blades. "No wonder we live underground next to the darkspawn!"

"In a volcano, no less," Anders pointed out. "Much, much safer than this."

"At least the plants don't attack us."

"That's because there aren't any."

The body lay in a sad crumpled heap. Alim knew before he'd taken a step towards it that it was Kristoff, knew he was dead, and he'd have to explain it to a grieving wife when he got back to the keep. Any chance the darkspawn could kill me first? It wasn't a duty he was looking forward to. "Anders," he waved the other mage over as he knelt by the corpse. "Tell me I'm right and we couldn't have got here fast enough to save him. Please."

Anders knelt by the corpse, examining it without touching. "Rest easy, Commander," he said. "This man's been dead at least a two weeks. It's cold here, and he's away from the damp, that's why he looks fresh."

"Even if we'd come straight here…."

Anders shook his head. "We had to find out where he was first, Commander," he said. "There's nothing you could have done."

He felt them then, the spawn. At least twenty, surrounding them. Anders must have felt the same; he frowned and looked behind him.

One of the talking ones was here. Alim stood, slowly, wondering if this one would bother to say anything. He unslung Wintersbreath, ready to kill it, but didn't cast, not yet.

"Yes, that is your grey warden," the thing lisped uncertainly. "The mother told it to me, that if he was lured here and slain, in time you would come. And the mother, she was right. The mother is always right."

Alim tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. "You wanted me to come to ambush me I suppose?"

"Ah, ambush. An attack yes? This here, it is no attack. I, here before you, is the First. And I am bringing to you a message. The mother, she is not permitting you to further his plans. Whether this you know or not. So she is sending you a gift."

He didn't have time to ask who the mysterious he was, before the darkspawn lifted its paw and Alim felt the veil tear around him. He cried out, squeezing his eyes shut against the rip in his reality, as the forest and night around them faded.

A moment later, he was picking himself up from the familiar cracked and brown ground of the fade. "By a nug's cock," he muttered. "I hate the sodding fade."

"You and me both," Anders said.

"The fade?" Oghren's voice was incredulous. "This is the fade?"

"Um… talk later, Oghren!" Sigrun said. "Looks like we've got company!"

The darkspawn had been sucked through with them. Funny that, with all his ranting, he'd failed to realise that a veil tear was not the most precise of ways to get rid of an enemy. This Mother was probably as irritated by his speech patterns as Alim was.

They killed the darkspawn and the grubs, but the talking one - the First - ran off before he could finish him. Alim sighed and slung his staff back on his back, pinching the bridge of his nose, fighting against the pervading headache that always started whenever he visited the fade.

"Um… first time you've been here since the blood magic thing?" Anders said softly beside him. Alim opened his eyes and looked at his fellow mage, questioning.

"What do you mean?"

"You'd better be very careful," Anders said, nodding towards a group of shades and a rage demon.

Alim groaned.

They fought their way through the fade. Alim had to admit it was nice to have company this time around - when he'd been in the fade in Ferelden he'd been on the verge of crazy with no one to talk to but Niall and people who were determined to teach him how to shapeshift. And demons. There didn't seem to be more demons than usual, though, despite Anders' mutterings about blood mages.

When they finally made their way into the ghostly village, Oghren had calmed down enough to be useful in a fight again and Alim was beginning to forget what the real world was like. When it turned out a fade spirit was helping the villagers, however, he was intrigued.

"A spirit?" the guard who told them was almost certainly a little crazy - no one could be stuck here for that long and remain sane. "Are you certain it's not a demon?"

He looked momentarily confused. "I… I don't think so. He claims to want to help us, and he has asked for nothing in return…"

"You couldn't give a demon anything, in any case," Anders said. "There'd be no point. We on the other hand…"

"You think it is a demon, Anders?"

"I've never heard of a spirit voluntarily helping someone before," Anders shrugged.

Alim frowned, "I have," he said. "It's worth checking out, in any case."

"He's at the gates," the guard said. "He wants us to storm the baroness - kill her."

"Can she be killed?" Nathaniel asked.

"Everything can be killed," Alim said, shifting Wintersbreath on his back. "At least in my experience. And I've killed a lot of things. Let's go meet this spirit."

"You're the spirit of Justice?" Alim eyed the glowing figure speculatively. He remembered his harrowing, the spirit of Valour who he had been forced to fight, and wondered, not for the first time, if spirits such as this could bestow the kind of power he'd been using himself since healing Anders in the deep roads. Wynne's spirit had only ever been used for healing, but if he could convince one to bolster his offensive spells the inherent danger in blood magic could be offset a little.

Unless spirits didn't care for blood the same way demons did.

Any other time he would sit the man (he couldn't help thinking of it as a man, the armour and the deep booming voice were a bit too overwhelming) down and have a long discussion. As it was they had a crazed blood mage to defeat and a talking darkspawn to kill.

"Right, then," Alim said. "Let's do this."

The baroness sundered the veil once more using the First's life force to send them all back into the real world. Alim was thankful this time they didn't wake up to battle, but as he clambered to his feet he could immediately sense there was something not right in the small clearing.

It became obvious almost immediately, when Kristoff's body started to stir. He readied his weapon, expecting possession - perhaps the Baroness had taken this body?

It wasn't the Baroness.

"No. No, this cannot be!" the voice that emerged from the ruined throat had elements of the voice Alim had heard in the fade, but it had its differences. That he could speak at all amazed him. Surprisingly, Anders was the one who managed to get the spirit to calm enough to talk to them. "We must find the baroness and kill her," the spirit said, finally.

"You mean she came through as well?" Sigrun said. "What, can people just do that?"

"Not usually," Alim muttered. "But we'd better find her and kill her. I suppose."

"She is a demon of Pride now," the spirit said.

"Great. My favourite kind." He rubbed the back of his head and surveyed his troops. They were filthy, grumpy and tired. Even Anders' usually impeccably clean robes were covered in muck and blood. "Let's go kill it," he said.

Blood Wound Chapter 14

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