Chapter 13 - The Tower of Ishal

Alistair was the first through the door, shield raised and sword at the ready. Arual and Bran followed a pace behind him, flanking to either side. Arual's sword was in her hand again, but the further they moved into the darkness of the tower, the less certain she was it was needed.

Then, quietly, there came a humming in her mind, as if someone were playing a dissonant note right between her eyes. Gooseflesh rose up on her arms and the back of her neck. A cold bile began to rise in her throat. She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Would it always be like this? With this horrible feeling and humming every time the darkspawn were near…it was a wonder all Grey Wardens were not lost to madness. Arual supposed this was another reason the Grey Wardens were such a secretive order. She could think of no one who would willingly take the grey if they knew the consequences. 

"I can sense them," Arual whispered, "but I don't see them."

"Keep your guard up," Alistair advised, voice low, but not quite a whisper.

All at once, the world erupted in heat and light. Arual was knocked off her feet by a blast of fire. Supine, she lifted her shield to protect her face from the flames jetting above. Heat pounded against her shield, radiating through wood and steel, leather, and cloth right down to her flesh. For a moment she feared she was going to be boiled in her armor! Under the roar of the fire, she could hear Bran's bark and snarl as he raced ahead. The fire burned through all other sound, all other sensation. There was only the flame, and the flame was all-consuming.

Then, as quickly as it had come on, the fire was gone. The sudden vacuum left behind stole Arual's breath, leaving her coughing and sputtering on the stone floor.

"Arual!" Alistair cried. He sounded far off, his concerned voice rising over the sounds of a skirmish.

"I'm all right!" she croaked, though she didn't know if he heard her. Arual forced herself to her feet, grimacing. Fire now flickered in several braziers around the tower floor, filling the once dark room with light. It was a good thing, too, as Arual caught sight of an arrow coming her way and managed to raise her shield in time to protect herself. The bolt slammed into her shield with bruising force, but Arual shook it off. 

The room was teeming with darkspawn. Until now, she'd only had to face the creatures in the open air. Seeing them here, in this enclosed space, somehow made them all the more terrifying. Her heart stuttered in her chest, cool sweat beading on her brow at the realization. They were a force she couldn't ignore or escape—only overcome or perish.

A familiar bark broke through her spiraling thoughts, shattering them and filling her mind with a sudden clarity.

In the distance, Arual saw Bran leap from powerful hindlegs, flinging himself at the enemy. His jaws closed around the throat of a Hurlock archer, baring the monster to the ground and thrashing with all his might. Even over the sounds of battle, Arual heard the snap of bone as the creature's neck broke.

Nearby, Alistair gave a cry, coupled with the sounds of metal clashing. Another hurlock was beating against his shield, a wicked-looking axe in each hand. The blades were chipped and jagged, covered in rust and what Arual hoped was blood. Alistair struggled to get out from beneath the hurlock's assault, but it was all he could do to keep his shield up against the onslaught.

Behind him, Arual spied a genlock trudging toward Alistair's flank, dagger flashing in the firelight.

Arual's body was moving before her mind could catch up. She closed the gap between her and the beast in a few quick strides, and buried her sword to the hilt in the genlock's back. It died with a grunt and fell to the stone, but Arual didn't give herself time to consider the beast. She let her momentum carry her forward, flanking the darkspawn who hammered at Alistair's shield and giving it something else to think about.

It shifted to guard against her attack, but the moment it did Alistair found his opening and drove his own blade through the thing's neck. Black blood bubbled up out of the hurlock's gaping maw with a wet gurgle. Alistair recovered his blade with a grunt, allowing the monster to fall to the stone beside it's brood mate.

"Glad to see you're back in it," he said flashing her an unexpected grin. As though they'd practiced it a dozen times, the two wordlessly pressed their back together and fell into fighting stances. More darkspawn closed in, outnumbering them three—no, four to one but the pair of junior Grey Wardens refused to give any of them quarter. All the while, Bran dashed to and fro, distracting enemies, then picking off whichever darkspawn he could along the periphery of the battle, slowly making his way toward his mistress.

In this way, the trio made quick work of the mob, but the battle was no less harrowing for its short duration.

When it was over, Arual found herself bent over, hands on her knees, as she gasped for air. Her body was vibrating, blood rushing in her ears, skin flush. She tried to take stock of her injuries as she caught her breath. Her shield arm felt bruised, a shallow gash along her cheek stung fiercely as sweat poured into it, her face burnt from the blast of fire she'd had to contend with early on.

She scowled at the memory of the flame, at how it had nearly seared the skin from her face, and couldn't help but think she could have been better prepared for the darkspawn mage if she'd known such a thing were even possible! Straightening, she turned her glower on her fellow Grey Warden. 

"They can do magic?" Arual cried, angry and incredulous.

"Emissaries," Alistair clarified. He swung his sword in an arc at the ground, flicking ichor onto the stone with a sickening splattering noise. Arual wrinkled her nose. Darkspawn blood was not like the blood of a person or an animal—it was thick, black, and carried with it a smell of death and rot. It was a stomach-churning stench to which Arual doubted she would ever grow accustomed. She turned her attention back to Alistair who seemed less effected by the grisly mess, even as he swung his sword a second time to remove more gore from the blade.

"You didn't say they could do magic."

"No?"

"No."

"Oh…"

Alistair had the decency to look sheepish, though the shrug he offered her did him little credit. Arual took a breath to steady herself, and immediately regretted it as the stench of darkspawn hit her in full. The only one who seemed nonplussed by the smell was Bran. He licked a few drops of gore from his mistress's fingertips, then nuzzled into her palm. Arual moved her hand to scratch behind the mabari's ears to show she understood the deeper message the hound was trying to convey: they didn't have time to squabble.

"Is there anything else I need to know about the darkspawn?" she asked. "They can't turn invisible or into giants, can they?"

Arual had been half-joking, but Alistair's nervous fidgeting gave her pause. He leaned his sword against his leg to free his hand, which he ran through his hair and scratched at the sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

"Maker's Breath…"

"We call them shrieks," he explained. "They can't turn invisible, at least as far as I know. But they're fast and stealthy. Good at infiltration. The big ones are ogres."

Something in the way he said it turned her stomach to water. They'd fought the lumbering hurlocks, the stout genlocks, but Arual had never considered there could be other, perhaps more dangerous darkspawn. Dying in battle against these monsters had always been a possibility, even before she'd become a Grey Warden. Until now, though, she'd believed them to be little more than mindless hordes of monsters—little more than beasts.

But magic, traps, strategy…this spoke of an intelligence she hadn't been prepared for. One that made the darkspawn all the more dangerous. She felt her own mortality like a miasma—choking, smothering, burning her up from within. She could die here. Tonight. In this very tower.

Perhaps it would have been a kinder fate for Duncan to have left her to Howe's men. At least then all she would have had to face were men. The hurlocks and genlocks were terrible enough, but shrieks? Ogres? Arual didn't want to consider what enemies like that would be like.

"Are we likely to meet any?" she asked, hoping her voice did not betray her nerves.

"Let's hope not."

***

Arual, Alistair, and Bran made their way cautiously through the tower, conscious of the darkspawn lurking at the edges of their consciousness. It left Arual with a greasy feeling, as if she hadn't bathed in weeks.

The further they moved into the tower, the more evidence they found of the darkspawn taint. It grew in great spidery tendrils of black rot, not unlike the black mold Arual sometimes saw back in Highever, but with barnacle-like protrusions bulging from the dry, shiny film of the blackness. It carried with it the stench of decay; corrupting and destroying everything it could as it permeated into the tower. 

And yet no matter how unpleasant the sight, the smell, or the feeling, Arual could sense a horrible connection to the stuff. This is what she'd had to take into herself to fight the darkspawn—the very taint they carried with them, and which they used to corrupt the world. This blight upon the land was as much a part of her as it was of any darkspawn, now. She could feel it, lurking just beneath her flesh, writhing at the chance to be amongst its kin.

She fought down a wave of nausea as they snuck past a particularly large tendril of darkness. She was sure she hadn't made a sound, but Alistair turned to her all the same, concern and understanding in his warm, brown eyes.

"It gets easier," he promised, voice little more than a whisper.

Arual wondered if he had simply guessed at her discomfort, or if the taint connected the two of them to each other as it did the darkspawn. Could he sense her unease? She had so many questions, so many fears, but she swallowed them all like bile. Now was not the time to balk. They had a mission to complete, and time was running out.

Arual, Alistair, and Bran stole through the tower, moving as quickly as their armor and efforts at stealth would allow. There was no way they could take on the bulk of the darkspawn meandering through halls, there were simply too many of them for three warriors alone. Being able to sense the beasts allowed them to avoid large groups, but it meant having to take alternate, sometimes longer routes down unfamiliar corridors, hide in dust-covered barracks, or double-back along infested passages to reach the next level of the tower.

Battle was not altogether avoidable.

For all the mindlessness Arual had attributed to them, the darkspawn seemed to have battle strategy of their own. Many of the entrances to the tower's other floors had been barricaded and protected by small squadrons of darkspawn, forcing Arual, Alistair, and Bran to fight if they wanted to advance. It also meant they had to waste time barricading the path behind them when they could not find more defensible routes. The darkspawn were already mimicking the pincer maneuver the teyrn had planned for the battle by seizing the tower—it would be little surprise if they did the same to the Grey Wardens who had infiltrated their newest den.

Here and there, the companions found strange and macabre idols, banners, and totems presumably crafted by the darkspawn from bone, leather, and even flesh. They were each crudely made, but none of them seemed old. The darkspawn hadn't brought the effigies with them just for this raid. What would be the point? Rather, Arual had the sinking feeling that they had been made over a period of time—the fidgeting of restless souls and they bided their time, waiting for this battle to begin.

"They've been here a while," she breathed in realization.

"I don't understand," Alistair growled, voice low and bristling with frustration. "How could they have gotten in? There wasn't supposed to be any resistance here. The teyrn said he'd stationed men here. Where the bloody hell are they?"

Arual worried at her lower lip as she considered this. She was sure Alistair had meant the comment to be rhetorical, but there was no denying something wasn't right.

Teyrn Loghain was a man of legend—a brilliant strategist whose tactics had led to victory time and time again through the course of Ferelden's history. If he'd been tasked with securing the tower for this assault, then there was no reason to suspect he hadn't seen it done. Maker's Breath, they'd certainly found more than their share of hastily crafted sleeping quarters for the soldiers meant to be defending this area—enough to suit a small army.

Too many, Arual realized, to have been overrun without someone noticing before now…

Dread settled in her stomach as real and hard as stone, pushing a quiet swear from her lips.

"Arual?" Alistair asked, brow creased with concern.

"It's just…" she started, but bit down on the words and shook her head. It was impossible. It had to be impossible.

"What is it?" Alistair pressed. "Are you wounded? I think we have one last healing potion if—"

"No, I…I just…" she stumbled over the words, her tongue clumsy as her mind tried to rationale away the things that was staring them both in the face. She didn't want to believe it. The man she'd read so much about, whom she'd looked up to as a hero for so many years wouldn't have done this. Couldn't have done this!

Alistair called her name again, worry creeping into the edges of his voice. Something in the way he placed his hand on her shoulder seemed to knock the words lose from her throat, and they all came tumbling out like vomit.

"He did this. The teyrn. He let them in."

Alistair recoiled from her as if her words were thorns, even going so far as to take a step back. Emotions worked themselves through the muscles of his face, as if he couldn't quite decide where to land—hurt, confusion, incredulity, and anger each took their turns dominating parts of his features. His mouth opened and closed several times as he gaped at her.

"But that's…" he breathed, almost laughing. "No. No, that's impossible. Why would he do that?"

"I don't know," Arual said, speaking too quickly. "I-I-It doesn't make any sense, but it's the only thing that makes sense. The barracks, these idols, the taint—" Her words began to fail her, but there didn't seem to be much need for them anymore. There was no denying what was so plainly in front of them, no matter how much neither of them wanted to believe it. Even if they could explain away the dust covering the barracks, or the effigies to the Old Gods, they could feel it in the taint that pervaded the tower. The blight had always spread like an infection through the land, poisoning water, plant, animals, even buildings such as the Tower of Ishal. But not fast enough to pollute a structure like this in a single night.

The Junior Grey Wardens could feel it as sure as breathing—the taint had been here for days, maybe even longer than a week.

Something like that would not have gone unnoticed. Not unless someone was working to hide it.

Arual tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. "Alistair, what are we going to do?"

The apple of his throat bobbed as he tried to speak. He stared into the middle distance, expression a squall of emotion. Eventually, though, he set his jaw, resolute, and turned back to her.

"We light the beacon," he said at length. "I know how things look right now, but Cailin gave us a job and we need to see it through. At least, then, we can say we did our part."

"But—"

"Come on," he said, and turned away.

Arual hesitated, watching Alistair as he made for the end of the corridor. Despite the way he tried to square his shoulders, there was no mistaking the tremble in his hands, nor the uncertainly bleeding into his gait.