Vesryn's pristine armor was spattered with blood at this point, but every drop of it belonged to corrupted templars. Saraya had effectively guided him to dispatch any enemy that had crossed his path, and even many of those that only crossed the others, though of course he hadn't been quick enough to prevent all the injuries in his allies. Even his shield could only be in one place at one time.
Focused as he was on the fight, he'd been especially wary of any signs from Saraya since the ambush from the Lord Seeker, or rather the demon that had formerly worn his shape. He remembered nothing of it, only trying to get in the way of the charge, getting caught up with Estella as they fell, and then... black. Estella's face was the first thing he saw upon waking, the first thing he comprehended. There were far worse things to lay eyes on after being knocked out, of course.
As they'd worked together to bring back more of the low-ranking officers, he'd noted that Saraya looked upon Estella differently. How, he could not say, and there was no time to speculate on it. They had a task to complete here.
The Knight-Captain, SĂ©verine, nodded at Cyrus, and smoothly stepped up on top of one of the tables shoved off to the side, allowing the assembled templars to see her more clearly. She pointed her blade out at the group. "Templars! I ask of you: what is Envy?"
"A wretched thing!" cried one.
"Weakness!"
"A pathetic demon!"
"A coward, Sister!"
"A coward," SĂ©verine repeated, nodding. "In order to study, and worm into our hearts, it must hide. We will drag it into the light!" A first cheer went up among the templars, accompanied by a cacophony of swords bashed against the faces of shields.
SĂ©verine stepped down and began approaching the barrier, while the templars cleared from her path. "Those who have been taken by this demon and its promises of power are corrupt. They have betrayed the Order and all they once stood for. We, the true templars, will show them no mercy." The grimmer nature of the task did not receive a cheer, but instead a hardened rumbling, an anger building to do what needed to be done.
"Join me, Brothers and Sisters, and tear down this barrier. Give Envy no place to hide. And give the Red Templars no reason not to run!" She accepted a chalice of lyrium from a scribe when offered, the draught steaming with a frost-like substance. SĂ©verine drank deeply, and once the scribe retreated from her, she took her sword in both hands, and knelt, placing the point of it into the floor. The other templars followed her lead.
They began to glow with a golden light, some brighter than others, and the sickly green barrier above them began to tremble and waver. Vesryn adjusted his grip on his spear and shield, and moved forward in preparation to advance up the stairs. It was not long before the demon's barrier let out a wretched wail, and then shattered altogether.
From the top of the stairs came the Red Templars, storming in down in a disorganized formation to engage. SĂ©verine looked back at the Inquisition members aiding them. "Cut through, find the demon, and destroy it! We'll deal with these traitors." Their blood worked up for the fight, the templars smashed into the first arriving group of enemies, engaging them with a fearsome fervor.
Vesryn glanced sideways at his allies. "Let's get moving."
âAn excellent suggestion.â Cyrus softened up a likely trajectory for them by sending a massive fireball through it, forcing several red templars to throw themselves to the side, some of them landing poorly and falling down the staircase in the process. One didnât get away in time and took a full blast of flame to the face, collapsing in a cacophony of shrill cries. âHow about that way?â
âGood enough,â Leon growled, cracking his neck under his helmet and bursting forward. His momentum seemed little affected by the fact that he was essentially fighting uphill, and he took two stairs at a time as though that were the way they were meant to be used. Considering the objective was only to clear a path, he didnât linger long on any one red templarâgenerally speaking, one hit was enough to get any given individual out of the way, and he struck out with elbows, fists, knees, and feet, almost too fluid for a person encased in that much armor. Several of them, he simply gripped by the neck of their armor and pulled, toppling them facefirst down the staircase. Cyrus had driven a wedge into the line, and he was making a full tunnel of it.
Vesryn cleared the way for easy passage behind Leon's destructive force, tossing away any red templars that were fortunate enough to survive the initial encounter. They pushed up the stairs with little difficulty; Vesryn was able to surmise that the Red Templar force engaging them here was not much more than a rear guard, judging by their numbers. SĂ©verine and the templars she led would no doubt be able to handle them given some time.
All of their party through, they took off down the hall towards the outdoors, a sort of grassy overlook of the forested land far below. The sections of walls before them had steadily crumbled from weather much like they were currently experiencing. The rain came down as steady and cold as it had upon entering the hall originally, and the earth beneath Vesryn's boots felt soft, vulnerable to being torn up if too much weight was applied in the wrong way.
"I touched so much of you," the demon said, with a voice from no particular direction, as before, "but you are selfish with your glory. Now I'm no one." Vesryn kept his eyes glued to the sides of the group, not desiring to be taken by surprise again. There was nowhere for the demon to run now, but while it did not prefer to fight directly, he had no doubt that it could if pressed into a corner, as it was.
"Lovely creature, this," Vesryn commented dryly. His spear remained leveled before him, ready to strike.
âAnd this isnât the half of it,â Estella replied from beside him, her hands flexing on the grip of her saber. Her eyes were in constant motion over the field, a wariness that turned out to be quite wise. âThere!â It did not manifest with the same directness as another demon would have. Pride would have stood before them and demanded acknowledgement. Desire and Rage would have commanded attention just as certainly.
But Envy appeared at their flank, a hideous thing with pale pink flesh, like someone had taken a human body, stretched it impossibly long, torn up the head and sewn it back together again with crude stiches and forgotten anything but the mouth, a thin red slash filled with sharpened, bloodstained teeth. It had a second set of arms beneath the first, shorter, almost humanoid still, a reminder, perhaps, of something it had once been. In all, it had to be nearly ten feet tall, but it was thin, in places little more than skin stretched over bones, too tight to be comfortable. Hardly a wonder it wanted someone elseâs form and face, really.
No sooner had it appeared than the sodden ground beneath them began to turn black, in a ring much like that caused by a terror, save that its radius was considerably greater. Estella dashed out of it quickly, but Leon seemed to pay it almost no mind, simply moving himself off the circle in his barreling charge towards the demon itself. It threw something at him, shimmering slightly in the air like heat off the desertâlikely a concussion blast of some kind, and the two met at full speed. The Seeker dug his feet in, pushing through and tearing rents in the soft earth beneath him. The hit slowed him considerably, but it did not stop him, and faced with an incoming assault, the demon seemed to open another one of the dark spots on the ground and dove through, reappearing far to the other side of the field and hurling a massive chunk of what had once been masonry with telekinetic force for the group.
A blast of lightning hit the boulder in midair, the resulting explosion breaking apart the stone and raining it down upon them as harmless detritus. Cyrus switched his attention to the demon itself thereafter, hurling a tiny orb of magic from each of the fingers on his left hand at once. They flew swiftly, and when the first hit, it encased the demonâs left leg in ice. The next three seemed to target different joints of its body, one successfully locking up the larger right elbow. The others hit, and spread, but it was able to crack the ice crystals off with movement.
A few seconds later, the mageâs form blurred, then disappeared entirely, reappearing much closer to the demon, which abruptly found itself faced with an opponent quite close. It swung a clawed hand for Cyrus, who ducked under it and retaliated with a horizontal slash, but Envy twisted with inhuman strength and flexibility, and the sword he used met only air.
Limber and quick as it was, it could not dodge two well-placed strikes at once, or at least in extremely quick succession. Vesryn had flanked Envy after Cyrus moved in for his attack, and his spear found the creature's torso, spilling blood and earning an enraged shriek of pain. Vesryn anticipated the counterattack; Saraya was familiar with such an opponent, which did not surprise Vesryn in the slightest. No demon was an unknown entity to her.
He withdrew his spear and properly angled his shield above his upper body to deflect the first slash to the side, and the adjusted to deflect the second slash the opposite way. The third he took head on, jarring his shield arm but stopping the clawed arm of Envy cold and giving him an opening to put his spear right through the thing's elbow joint. Its horrid features, or lack thereof, still twisted in pain from the injury, and it sought to flee, diving into a black pit it opened in the ground beneath it. Vesryn wrenched his spear free and stepped away from the magic beneath him.
"Watch your feet!" he called to the others, certain it would pick a spot to come up again soon, and it never preferred to assault directly.
When it did reemerge, it wasnât the fleet magician, the precise warrior, or the powerful Seeker it went for. The demon was a coward, and it chose the cowardâs target: Estella. She didnât look all that surprised when it sprang up behind her, and without looking over her shoulder, she rolled herself to the side, its claws digging deep furrows in the fragile earth sheâd been standing on seconds before. When she came up out of the roll, she turned herself around to face it, her momentum channeling into a smooth, controlled lash with her saber. The maneuver opened up a bloody line on the arm closest to her, and she stepped in closer, taking on the role of aggressor.
Her feet were light over the ground, her strokes no longer or flashier than they needed to be, and her efficiency was rewarded when two new gashes appeared over the creatureâs torso, its gangly limbs less effective when someone had closed to so close a distance. It tried to dive under again, but this time met some trouble when a strong grip closed over the arm Cyrus had previously frozen. Leonâs hand nearly made it all the way around the rangy bicep of the demon, and the blow he delivered to its elbow snapped the limb clean off, made possible by the magical cold that lingered still at the joint.
Envy shrieked, a sonic blast that forced both of them back far enough for it to make its escape. Estella landed hard on her side, sliding another few feet back when her impact tore up the grass and slicked her left half with mud. Leon kept his feet, but lost his grip on the demon, allowing it to retreat once more.
This time, it came up closest to Cyrus, who immediately flung a massive bolt at it, staggering the creature before it had a moment to react. Adjusting his feet, he sped forward again, the hum of his blade followed by a new, smoking furrow dug across the back of its knees. It looked to be about to try and dive again, but with a broad gesture, he cast another spell, and bars of crackling lightning appeared to close it in from all sides, even below. The gaps between were more than adequate for a spear or other weapon with reach, however, and the mage turned, nodding tersely to Vesryn.
The elf nodded back, allowing his shield to fall to the ground, before he flipped his grip around on his spear. "Hold still for me, love." He briefly took aim, before he stepped into a throw and hurled his spear like a javelin right between two of the bars of crackling energy. The weapon punched clean through Envy's chest, rendering it incapable of screaming any further. Instead, it gurgled miserably for a moment, before it slumped sideways to the ground, and stilled.
"Nice throw," SĂ©verine commented, from the top of the short flight of stairs that led back into the main hall. A large number of the templars from inside had followed her out, those that had made it through the fighting without serious injury. The Knight-Captain herself was heavily bloodied, at least over her armor, but most of it appeared to belong to others. "It's over then. For now."
"I expect the other Red Templars won't simply give up," Vesryn speculated, walking to the corpse of Envy and pulling his spear free.
"No, they won't." SĂ©verine looked back at the battered group of men and women she'd come into command of. "The fight won't be truly done with until the last of these traitors have been dealt with. Until the Order's direction has been restored."
âAnd that will not be a simple process.â Ophelia spoke up then, stepping forward to draw even with SĂ©verine. âThe Templars have numbers across Thedas, but their leadership is in ruins. Most either knew not of what was going on, or were complicit in it.â She crossed her arms over her chest, glancing over those assembled. âThese are a good lot, though. It would be a waste for them to idle when their skills could be so useful.â Her eyes flickered between Leon, helmed and silent at present, and Estella, who stood straight, but unable to hide the fact that one of her arms was limp at her side, the one sheâd landed on earlier.
âAll the Inquisition came here to do was ask of them their help. The Breach threatens us all, and they could be instrumental in closing it.â She shook her head, then turned to the body of them as a whole. âIf that is something youâd be willing to do, weâd welcome your blades and your stout hearts. Weâve need of both, and it would give you somewhere to be and something to fight for. You know by now that we have allies of all kinds, and youâd be equal among them.â She smiled slightly, though it was tinged a little by the pain she was clearly in, and glanced at SĂ©verine.
"Not how I imagined this turning out," the Knight-Captain admitted, shaking her head with a little smile. "But I think my Commander will understand if I don't return home just yet. The Breach does indeed need closing, and I would be honored to lead these templars in helping you do it, Lady Herald." Her plated, closed fist thumped against her chestplate. "You have our blades."
Focused as he was on the fight, he'd been especially wary of any signs from Saraya since the ambush from the Lord Seeker, or rather the demon that had formerly worn his shape. He remembered nothing of it, only trying to get in the way of the charge, getting caught up with Estella as they fell, and then... black. Estella's face was the first thing he saw upon waking, the first thing he comprehended. There were far worse things to lay eyes on after being knocked out, of course.
As they'd worked together to bring back more of the low-ranking officers, he'd noted that Saraya looked upon Estella differently. How, he could not say, and there was no time to speculate on it. They had a task to complete here.
The Knight-Captain, SĂ©verine, nodded at Cyrus, and smoothly stepped up on top of one of the tables shoved off to the side, allowing the assembled templars to see her more clearly. She pointed her blade out at the group. "Templars! I ask of you: what is Envy?"
"A wretched thing!" cried one.
"Weakness!"
"A pathetic demon!"
"A coward, Sister!"
"A coward," SĂ©verine repeated, nodding. "In order to study, and worm into our hearts, it must hide. We will drag it into the light!" A first cheer went up among the templars, accompanied by a cacophony of swords bashed against the faces of shields.
SĂ©verine stepped down and began approaching the barrier, while the templars cleared from her path. "Those who have been taken by this demon and its promises of power are corrupt. They have betrayed the Order and all they once stood for. We, the true templars, will show them no mercy." The grimmer nature of the task did not receive a cheer, but instead a hardened rumbling, an anger building to do what needed to be done.
"Join me, Brothers and Sisters, and tear down this barrier. Give Envy no place to hide. And give the Red Templars no reason not to run!" She accepted a chalice of lyrium from a scribe when offered, the draught steaming with a frost-like substance. SĂ©verine drank deeply, and once the scribe retreated from her, she took her sword in both hands, and knelt, placing the point of it into the floor. The other templars followed her lead.
They began to glow with a golden light, some brighter than others, and the sickly green barrier above them began to tremble and waver. Vesryn adjusted his grip on his spear and shield, and moved forward in preparation to advance up the stairs. It was not long before the demon's barrier let out a wretched wail, and then shattered altogether.
From the top of the stairs came the Red Templars, storming in down in a disorganized formation to engage. SĂ©verine looked back at the Inquisition members aiding them. "Cut through, find the demon, and destroy it! We'll deal with these traitors." Their blood worked up for the fight, the templars smashed into the first arriving group of enemies, engaging them with a fearsome fervor.
Vesryn glanced sideways at his allies. "Let's get moving."
âAn excellent suggestion.â Cyrus softened up a likely trajectory for them by sending a massive fireball through it, forcing several red templars to throw themselves to the side, some of them landing poorly and falling down the staircase in the process. One didnât get away in time and took a full blast of flame to the face, collapsing in a cacophony of shrill cries. âHow about that way?â
âGood enough,â Leon growled, cracking his neck under his helmet and bursting forward. His momentum seemed little affected by the fact that he was essentially fighting uphill, and he took two stairs at a time as though that were the way they were meant to be used. Considering the objective was only to clear a path, he didnât linger long on any one red templarâgenerally speaking, one hit was enough to get any given individual out of the way, and he struck out with elbows, fists, knees, and feet, almost too fluid for a person encased in that much armor. Several of them, he simply gripped by the neck of their armor and pulled, toppling them facefirst down the staircase. Cyrus had driven a wedge into the line, and he was making a full tunnel of it.
Vesryn cleared the way for easy passage behind Leon's destructive force, tossing away any red templars that were fortunate enough to survive the initial encounter. They pushed up the stairs with little difficulty; Vesryn was able to surmise that the Red Templar force engaging them here was not much more than a rear guard, judging by their numbers. SĂ©verine and the templars she led would no doubt be able to handle them given some time.
All of their party through, they took off down the hall towards the outdoors, a sort of grassy overlook of the forested land far below. The sections of walls before them had steadily crumbled from weather much like they were currently experiencing. The rain came down as steady and cold as it had upon entering the hall originally, and the earth beneath Vesryn's boots felt soft, vulnerable to being torn up if too much weight was applied in the wrong way.
"I touched so much of you," the demon said, with a voice from no particular direction, as before, "but you are selfish with your glory. Now I'm no one." Vesryn kept his eyes glued to the sides of the group, not desiring to be taken by surprise again. There was nowhere for the demon to run now, but while it did not prefer to fight directly, he had no doubt that it could if pressed into a corner, as it was.
"Lovely creature, this," Vesryn commented dryly. His spear remained leveled before him, ready to strike.
âAnd this isnât the half of it,â Estella replied from beside him, her hands flexing on the grip of her saber. Her eyes were in constant motion over the field, a wariness that turned out to be quite wise. âThere!â It did not manifest with the same directness as another demon would have. Pride would have stood before them and demanded acknowledgement. Desire and Rage would have commanded attention just as certainly.
But Envy appeared at their flank, a hideous thing with pale pink flesh, like someone had taken a human body, stretched it impossibly long, torn up the head and sewn it back together again with crude stiches and forgotten anything but the mouth, a thin red slash filled with sharpened, bloodstained teeth. It had a second set of arms beneath the first, shorter, almost humanoid still, a reminder, perhaps, of something it had once been. In all, it had to be nearly ten feet tall, but it was thin, in places little more than skin stretched over bones, too tight to be comfortable. Hardly a wonder it wanted someone elseâs form and face, really.
No sooner had it appeared than the sodden ground beneath them began to turn black, in a ring much like that caused by a terror, save that its radius was considerably greater. Estella dashed out of it quickly, but Leon seemed to pay it almost no mind, simply moving himself off the circle in his barreling charge towards the demon itself. It threw something at him, shimmering slightly in the air like heat off the desertâlikely a concussion blast of some kind, and the two met at full speed. The Seeker dug his feet in, pushing through and tearing rents in the soft earth beneath him. The hit slowed him considerably, but it did not stop him, and faced with an incoming assault, the demon seemed to open another one of the dark spots on the ground and dove through, reappearing far to the other side of the field and hurling a massive chunk of what had once been masonry with telekinetic force for the group.
A blast of lightning hit the boulder in midair, the resulting explosion breaking apart the stone and raining it down upon them as harmless detritus. Cyrus switched his attention to the demon itself thereafter, hurling a tiny orb of magic from each of the fingers on his left hand at once. They flew swiftly, and when the first hit, it encased the demonâs left leg in ice. The next three seemed to target different joints of its body, one successfully locking up the larger right elbow. The others hit, and spread, but it was able to crack the ice crystals off with movement.
A few seconds later, the mageâs form blurred, then disappeared entirely, reappearing much closer to the demon, which abruptly found itself faced with an opponent quite close. It swung a clawed hand for Cyrus, who ducked under it and retaliated with a horizontal slash, but Envy twisted with inhuman strength and flexibility, and the sword he used met only air.
Limber and quick as it was, it could not dodge two well-placed strikes at once, or at least in extremely quick succession. Vesryn had flanked Envy after Cyrus moved in for his attack, and his spear found the creature's torso, spilling blood and earning an enraged shriek of pain. Vesryn anticipated the counterattack; Saraya was familiar with such an opponent, which did not surprise Vesryn in the slightest. No demon was an unknown entity to her.
He withdrew his spear and properly angled his shield above his upper body to deflect the first slash to the side, and the adjusted to deflect the second slash the opposite way. The third he took head on, jarring his shield arm but stopping the clawed arm of Envy cold and giving him an opening to put his spear right through the thing's elbow joint. Its horrid features, or lack thereof, still twisted in pain from the injury, and it sought to flee, diving into a black pit it opened in the ground beneath it. Vesryn wrenched his spear free and stepped away from the magic beneath him.
"Watch your feet!" he called to the others, certain it would pick a spot to come up again soon, and it never preferred to assault directly.
When it did reemerge, it wasnât the fleet magician, the precise warrior, or the powerful Seeker it went for. The demon was a coward, and it chose the cowardâs target: Estella. She didnât look all that surprised when it sprang up behind her, and without looking over her shoulder, she rolled herself to the side, its claws digging deep furrows in the fragile earth sheâd been standing on seconds before. When she came up out of the roll, she turned herself around to face it, her momentum channeling into a smooth, controlled lash with her saber. The maneuver opened up a bloody line on the arm closest to her, and she stepped in closer, taking on the role of aggressor.
Her feet were light over the ground, her strokes no longer or flashier than they needed to be, and her efficiency was rewarded when two new gashes appeared over the creatureâs torso, its gangly limbs less effective when someone had closed to so close a distance. It tried to dive under again, but this time met some trouble when a strong grip closed over the arm Cyrus had previously frozen. Leonâs hand nearly made it all the way around the rangy bicep of the demon, and the blow he delivered to its elbow snapped the limb clean off, made possible by the magical cold that lingered still at the joint.
Envy shrieked, a sonic blast that forced both of them back far enough for it to make its escape. Estella landed hard on her side, sliding another few feet back when her impact tore up the grass and slicked her left half with mud. Leon kept his feet, but lost his grip on the demon, allowing it to retreat once more.
This time, it came up closest to Cyrus, who immediately flung a massive bolt at it, staggering the creature before it had a moment to react. Adjusting his feet, he sped forward again, the hum of his blade followed by a new, smoking furrow dug across the back of its knees. It looked to be about to try and dive again, but with a broad gesture, he cast another spell, and bars of crackling lightning appeared to close it in from all sides, even below. The gaps between were more than adequate for a spear or other weapon with reach, however, and the mage turned, nodding tersely to Vesryn.
The elf nodded back, allowing his shield to fall to the ground, before he flipped his grip around on his spear. "Hold still for me, love." He briefly took aim, before he stepped into a throw and hurled his spear like a javelin right between two of the bars of crackling energy. The weapon punched clean through Envy's chest, rendering it incapable of screaming any further. Instead, it gurgled miserably for a moment, before it slumped sideways to the ground, and stilled.
"Nice throw," SĂ©verine commented, from the top of the short flight of stairs that led back into the main hall. A large number of the templars from inside had followed her out, those that had made it through the fighting without serious injury. The Knight-Captain herself was heavily bloodied, at least over her armor, but most of it appeared to belong to others. "It's over then. For now."
"I expect the other Red Templars won't simply give up," Vesryn speculated, walking to the corpse of Envy and pulling his spear free.
"No, they won't." SĂ©verine looked back at the battered group of men and women she'd come into command of. "The fight won't be truly done with until the last of these traitors have been dealt with. Until the Order's direction has been restored."
âAnd that will not be a simple process.â Ophelia spoke up then, stepping forward to draw even with SĂ©verine. âThe Templars have numbers across Thedas, but their leadership is in ruins. Most either knew not of what was going on, or were complicit in it.â She crossed her arms over her chest, glancing over those assembled. âThese are a good lot, though. It would be a waste for them to idle when their skills could be so useful.â Her eyes flickered between Leon, helmed and silent at present, and Estella, who stood straight, but unable to hide the fact that one of her arms was limp at her side, the one sheâd landed on earlier.
âAll the Inquisition came here to do was ask of them their help. The Breach threatens us all, and they could be instrumental in closing it.â She shook her head, then turned to the body of them as a whole. âIf that is something youâd be willing to do, weâd welcome your blades and your stout hearts. Weâve need of both, and it would give you somewhere to be and something to fight for. You know by now that we have allies of all kinds, and youâd be equal among them.â She smiled slightly, though it was tinged a little by the pain she was clearly in, and glanced at SĂ©verine.
"Not how I imagined this turning out," the Knight-Captain admitted, shaking her head with a little smile. "But I think my Commander will understand if I don't return home just yet. The Breach does indeed need closing, and I would be honored to lead these templars in helping you do it, Lady Herald." Her plated, closed fist thumped against her chestplate. "You have our blades."