A trap, huh?
Khari glanced between the others, registering the looks on their faces and concluding that it was probably going to be difficult to survive springing it. Not that they had much choice, anymore. Lucius had to know they were here, and he wasn't just going to let them go without pushing them into it. Sheathing her knife, she went for the greatsword on her back instead, shrugging her shoulders. âOkay. I mean, it's gonna be hard, but we knew that already. Might as well just go do it."
Hell, maybe if they could just kill Lucius, that would be enough to at least give them a chance against the rest. One thing she'd learned during her time with the Inquisition was that leaders, whether they were the best fighters or not, were absolutely necessary. Even big, scary powerful forces tended to fall to pieces if they went down. They'd probably only won at Adamant because they'd managed to fuck with the way the hierarchy went among the Wardens there. Corypheus knew it, too, considering all the trouble he'd gone to in his attempt to take out the leaders in Orlais.
Not that she was overly eager to follow Darkspawn logic, but strategy was strategy, and they knew what theirs had to be. All they had to do now was give it their best shot. And she had faith that it'd be good enough. It always was.
No one seemed that inclined to linger, anyway, but Leon looked a bit in his own head. He was holding a glass vial in his hand, she saw, his thumb brushing over the cork in it repeatedly, like he was trying to decide whether to open it or not. Khari wasn't sure what that was about, but he wouldn't waste the time if it wasn't important, so she shifted to take her turn at point, figuring that'd give him the rest of the walk to decide.
Navigating was just a matter of remembering what was where, and she'd studied the map for long enough to know how to point them at their destination. They didn't encounter any resistance on the way, not even another patrol, making it more likely that it really was a trap. They didn't pass any exitsâthose were further to the front of the building. They'd probably be heavily-guarded, to keep the party from getting out. Didn't really matter much anyway, as far as she was concerned.
The Lord Seeker needed to answer for what he'd done. Khari didn't pretend she knew what was right all the time, but she knew that much.
As it turned out, the main hall's door was already cracked open. Only an ominous silence greeted them at this point, and she couldn't see anything through the crackâit was too dark for that. Pausing, she turned back over her shoulder, shifting her grip on her sword to level it out in front of her. âReady?"
SĂ©verine had sheathed the short sword in favor of her flail, no doubt expecting there to be more room to swing in the main hall. For the moment she held the chain against the handle, both to reduce noise and to prevent accidentally touching anyone with the spiked metal ball on the end of it. "Let's have it done," she said, her expression conveying more anger than nervousness.
Rom nodded as well, and didn't feel the need to voice anything. He'd pulled his mask down, eyes locked at the space where the door was cracked open. He looked a little more tentative than usual, but he'd never backed down from a fight when there was one in front of him. She hadn't seen him take anything today, before or during the mission, so perhaps that was it. This fight was going to be all him, no unfair advantages applied.
Leon used the moment's pause to down the contents of the glass vial, shaking his head a little at the taste of it and replacing the empty vessel at his belt. Ophelia cracked her neck both ways, then nodded.
Jaw set, Leon stepped in front of Khari and pushed the door open.
It swung back smoothly on its hinges, but the motion was clearly a trigger for some kind of mechanism, because all at once, magelight torches lit on either side of the room, brightly enough that Leon's step hitched. He nearly reeled back, but then the sound of a low whistle cutting through the air reached them and he reacted to it seemingly on pure instinct, snatching the arrow out of the air with his right hand. It snapped in his hand, and he actually growled, the sound echoing softly in his helmet. Throwing it aside the remains, he burst forward, making a direct line for the most impressively-armored man in the room.
That manâsurely the Lord Seekerâwasn't wearing a helm, but was otherwise in well-wrought full plate, a halberd resting easily in one hand. Arrayed about the hall in organized columns were Venatori and Red Templars both. Any remaining doubt that this was an organized trap was dashed. The mages volleyed various elemental attacks at the charging Seeker, but by either luck or reflex, he bypassed them all, still barreling forward.
The numbers were bad: there were at least twenty reds here, and ten more Venatori, a few of them wearing the white robes of the most elite mages under Marcus's command. They wasted no time in moving to engage the Inquisition, either.
So Khari didn't waste time going to them. Even she registered a bit of trepidation at the sheer number of opponents to be had here, but even that disappeared when she took a deep breath and let the Haze come over her, sinking into the part of herself that wasâwould always beâhurt and furious and violent. The details around her seemed to sharpen in her vision, in her hearing. The haptic feedback from her body swallowed more deliberate thinking, sharpening her natural instincts. Those in turn drove her forward, the fight-or-flight dilemma resolved in the same way she always resolved it.
Sensation, raw and visceral, hummed beneath her skin when she swung for the first Red Templar to come within range. A shadow who'd gone in for a flank and found her more mobile than expected. Her sword shrieked where it scraped against the crystalline arm-blades on the other woman's body. The dizzy-sick feeling of being so close to the lyrium didn't even register. Not anymore. Khari's lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl; she pushed forward, breaking the lock with a hard step in and changing her angle.
Her blade found the weak spot just under the templar's chestplate, slipping in and bursting out the other side. But these were not so easily put down as any ordinary foe, and she anticipated that, twisting the sword with both her hands and then kicking the woman off the end of it, chopping into the sliver of skin between her gorget and her helmet when she staggered backwards from the blow. She dropped.
A mace caught her across the back of her chainmail, knocking the wind from her and throwing her to the ground. Khari rolled, blindly choosing to angle to the left, just in time to avoid the follow-up, which slammed into the stone floor where she'd just been. Finding her feet, she whirled, putting her back to the wall and dismissing the pain ricocheting up her spine as irrelevant. All pain was irrelevant. Nothing mattered as much as bringing the next one down.
She lunged.
SĂ©verine took on several enemies at once on one of Khari's sides, helping her avoid being surrounded for the moment. The templar's flail swung about in wide arcs, forcing all in front of her to think twice about rushing in. Each time it connected a small burst of red lyrium shards flew through the air, and she was quick to get her weapon moving again, constantly moving. The hits weren't lethal immediately, but all inflicted damage on the fallen templars. The first to die to her weapon was a Venatori whose helm proved insufficient against the spiked ball. The flail crunched through his skull, momentarily getting stuck as a red flood poured out. SĂ©verine had to plant a boot to his chest to free her weapon again.
It was a moment longer than she had at her disposal, and a barehanded knight took advantage on her unshielded side. His lyrium-hardened punch found her ribs on the right side, denting her scale mail and sending her stumbling unfortunately right into Khari mid-swing, with enough force to upset both of their balances. The knight pressed in, a hand grappling around her throat while the other tried to secure her wrist.
After a moment of fruitless struggle, she was relieved when Rom hurled himself onto the knight's back as best he could, his blade already dripping with blood. It was his marked hand he struck with, however, managing to get a hold on the knight's shoulder and unleashing a powerful blast that swallowed that lyrium encrusted upper arm, bursting the rest in a shower of red. Rom lost his grip immediately after, falling to the ground. He was forced to roll away from a downward stab of a less-corrupted Red Templar, who he dealt with quickly, finding an opening and driving his blade up into her throat. SĂ©verine discarded the knight that had grabbed her, and threw herself back into the fray.
Up ahead, Leon had at last reached the Lord Seeker, who was doing his apparent best to keep him at bay with the halberd, which gave him a significant reach advantage. The fact that there were two extremely large Red Templar knights at either side of him was no doubt helping with that, though like Khari, Leon seemed to be unconcerned with pain right now, if he even felt it. Knocking aside a heavy two-handed blow from one of the knights, Leon intercepted a downward swing of the halberd, catching the blade in his hand and using it to pull Lucius forward. He was heedless of the crimson spatter that dropped to the stone, evidence that the blade had cut into the thinner protection offered by the inside of his gauntlets.
Lucius lurched, and Leon had time to get in one powerful blow to the Lord Seeker's face, crunching his nose in with a low crack audible even to Khari. But any chance of a more fatal follow-up was precluded by the intervention of another knight, who drove a spear for Leon, forcing him to take a step back, lest his chainmail fail against the enhanced strength given by corrupt lyrium.
Lucius's face twisted. "Ugh, barbaric. I had almost managed to forget you were Ophelia's brat." He didn't dwell on the injury, though, not even as it gushed blood down his lips and chin. Instead, he firmed his grip on his halberd and swung again.
Ophelia herself had torn into the sole cluster of archers, including the one who fired the first arrow. He was unmoving on the floor, but there were plenty of others, and no few of them had drawn blades now that she was so close. Her ferocity was more contained than Leon's or Khari's: she placed her blows for maximum effect, every time. Already she'd felled three, but four more were surrounding her, and she clearly knew it, launching herself at one and physically bowling the smaller woman over to get clear of the knot. The moment any of them was truly surrounded would quite possibly be their last one.
Khari had found herself in a similar predicament, her mobility hampered by the fact that she didn't have much room to make use of it. She'd been separated from SĂ©verine by several yards as the fight wore on, and enemies had filled the gap. Between the suppressing fire some of the Venatori had shifted to using and the three Red Templars she was currently trying to handle, she'd seen better positioning, to say the least. That fact registered only dully, however, and she parried the next incoming blow, then swung around to sidestep the next. The third swept her feet out from under her with his poleaxe, and she went to the ground.
She attempted to roll away, but didn't make it too far before a heavy boot landed on her shoulder, hard enough that she'd definitely have a bruise if she survived this. The spearhead that followed was less merciful, punching through her chainmail into her belly. She shouted, a harsh yell as much fury as painâmore. One-handed, she swung her sword in a mighty arc, catching the templar's throat with the tip of the blade more by luck than anything. Clearly, they were not used to fighting those who could function in pain almost as well as they could.
Her wound pulled as she regained her feet, ducking under another swing of the poleax and stepping in, driving her pommel up into that one's chin. She could sense the other coming in behind her and dropped back to the floorâhis blade ran through his ally instead of her, and Khari drew the knife from her hip, stabbing it viciously into the back of his knee, where both armor and crystals were less protection. He didn't react overmuch, but she'd clearly severed something important, because the leg collapsed underneath him, leaving him to try and rebalance. He didn't get the chanceâstill on the floor, she drove her sword up into his lower back, severing the flexible cord part of his spine. A chunk of crystal fell away when she pulled the sword back out.
She was slower to rise this time. Slow enough, in fact, that a Venatori's well-aimed ice spell caught her left leg, sealing it to the floor. Two more followed, until she was encased in ice from her foot to her hip on that side. The mage, one of the white-robes, readied what seemed to be a much larger spell, from the way it crackled and hissed at her fingertips.
A short crossbow bolt found the mage's side, lodging between her ribs. Rom had loosed it, and rushed the mage leading with his shield. Rather than unleash the charged lightning spell at the temporarily rooted Khari, she turned it on Rom to protect herself, unloading a torrent of disorganized lightning out in front of her. The spell was wide enough to catch several Red Templars caught in its path, but Rom was in the center of it, and received it in full.
Khari had seen Rom shrug off worse spells like they were mere annoyances, but this one stopped him in his tracks, and when the blinding light faded, the Inquisitor was shaking violently on the spot, barely able to remain upright. A knife-armed Red Templar took advantage, plunging the blade into his lower back, likely only missing the spine because it was a moving target. He withdrew the knife as quick as it went in, flipping it into a backhand grip to plunge it in somewhere much higher, but Rom managed to turn and catch his wrists. He was driven back to a wall, and there the two grappled for a moment, until Rom, smoking skin and all, headbutted the Red Templar to stun him. Gaining control of the man's hands, he pushed them down hard, plunging the dagger into the man's own abdomen. A swift knee up into his head was enough to knock him flat on his back, and knock him out cold while he bled.
In the meantime SĂ©verine had rushed in on the mage. Her shield glowed with a white light, one that was expelled forcefully when she bashed it across the mage's head, her templar ability purging the remaining mana from the Venatori woman. She dropped to her knees, unable to rise, and SĂ©verine brought her flail around in a long arc, uppercutting and wrenching the mage's head back grotesquely. She tipped over and did not rise.
Several enemies closed around her at once after that from multiple sides, too many to deal with at once. Her flail drove back one, her shield blocked another, but an arrow of all things slipped through two of them and punctured into her abdomen. The hit came just before a shadow rushed in with a low feint followed by a downward slash from the other blade protruding from his arm. It caught SĂ©verine across her unprotected face, opening a bloody line from her forehead above the right eye, across the bridge of her nose and down to her left cheek. She stumbled back, reeling under the blows that followed on her shield and struggling to get a breath with an arrow lodged in her.
By this point, Leon was bloodied, but he'd successfully felled the original two knights with the Lord Seeker. Of course, more had diverted from their positions elsewhere, along with several of the Venatori that had been supporting their allies from the edges of the fight. A fireball struck Leon square in the back; he roared and lunged for the offending mage, closing his hand around her throat and squeezing. Something popped, and he dropped her, leaving a bloody smear where his hand had been and whirling to face the red closest to him.
The shadow attempted to stab him, its lyrium blade tearing a gash in Leon's chainmail like it was ordinary leather, but the commander twisted, avoiding the worst of the blow and taking the appendage in both hands. The eyes showing through the gaps in his helmet were as much red as violet, though the hue was not the same luminescent crimson as that belonging to the templars. It was closer to scarlet, a touch of orange or gold or something else in itâwhatever it was, it had to be the effects of that potion he'd taken before the fight. He gripped the lyrium arm and used it to swing the shadow, picking him up bodily and hurling him the few feet necessary to slam into a pair of Venatori. All three crashed to the ground in a heap; one of the mages was unlucky enough to be impaled on a red lyrium crystal protruding from the shadow's armor.
Another knight moved in behind him, jumping up onto Leon's back and wrenching his helmet off. It clanged against the stone where it hit the ground. Leon heaved, throwing the knight over his shoulder with great effort, bringing his boot down against the gap in the templar's helm where his face was. The knight fell still; whether he was unconscious or dead was hard to tell.
Lucius took the opportunity to slash at Leon's exposed face, splitting open his nose and cheek on the left side, down to the bone. He snarled, teeth bloody, and followed the halberd's retreat, taking hold of it beneath the blade with both hands and pulling. Lucius lost his grip, and Leon tossed the weapon away like a useless trinket. Blood ran freely over his armor, patches of it darkening his plain cloak. How much of it was his as opposed to someone else's was impossible to say, but his strength seemed only to grow with it in either case. Lucius took a step backwards, and another two reds converged upon Leon, who grabbed for the first and caught her by the shoulder, wrenching her head to the side to expose pallid skin, dark veins of corrupted lyrium splayed out beneath the nearly-translucent surface.
Rather than break her neck efficiently, as he'd done dozens of times before, Leon leaned down and bit her, tearing savagely into the flesh of her throat. She screamedâapparently some things were painful enough for even a Red Templar to feel pain. Or perhaps it was fear, instead. Either way, it didn't last long before she was limp, and Leon threw her down like chattel.
Abruptly, he staggered; the other Red Templar's longsword erupted from the center of his chest, coated in bright red blood. The shield on the templar's other arm lashed forward, catching him in the back of his head, and Leon fell to the floor, unmoving.
Ophelia lowered her shoulder into the templar responsible, carrying him away from his opportunity for any final blows, and shouted over the din. "We need to leave, now!"
That was probably true, but firstâKhari had only two things she wanted to do. And since she was temporarily free of assailants, she was damn well going to do both.
The Lord Seeker was dangerous even when disarmed, something he proved when he dodged her first swing entirely, drawing a sidearm from his hip and slashing for her exposed face. She leaned back out of the way of it and retaliated, sweeping low for his legs and stepping in when he hopped backwards in enough time to avoid it. Her aggression and his current lack of protection backed him up against the wall quickly, and though he managed to land a slash just under her jawline, the long fight with Leon had clearly worn him down, and without a Red Templar's endurance, he could not hold her off forever.
The edge of her sword found his chin, and she drove it up and back, striking the wall behind him with the tip before she wrenched it back out. Once that was done, she hurried back to Leon, where a predicament presented itself. She couldn't carry him with her sword strapped over her back, nor would one arm be sufficient, especially not in her injured state. Grimly, she tossed the blade aside, kneeling to situate him over her shoulder as well as she could. He was heavy, probably moreso than anything she'd managed to lift in training yet, and his height made it even more awkward. Still, she did her best to distribute his weight the way Mick had taught herâevenly across her shoulders.
Her wound damn near screamed at her when she tried to stand; she pulled a breath in through clenched teeth and returned to her knees. Maybe it would work if she were already standing, but there was no way she could get there on her own.
"On your feet!" Rom shouted from behind her. Before she could make the attempt his arms were looped under hers. "Now." He lifted with her, and the two sets of legs proved sufficient to get Khari's feet under her, stable enough to carry Leon, though the progress would be slow.
Rom came around in front of her, intercepting a Red Templar on the way. He blocked a downward strike with his shield, plunging his blade multiple times into the enemy's abdomen until the wounds were big enough for some of the man's innards to spill partway out. He shoved him off and turned to look at Khari, spattered head to toe with blood, and almost no way to tell how much of it was his. He gestured for her to get moving, and continued guarding the way forward for her. Somewhere behind her the clashes of metal and lyrium on shield and armor continued, as SĂ©verine watched her back. A pained grunt escaped her when she took another hit, but Khari didn't hear the sound of her falling, and that was all that really mattered at this point.
Ophelia led the way out, directing them no doubt more from her mental map of the place than anything. As Khari had predicted, the Templars and Venatori both were considerably less organized without their leader, and though the reds still seemed willing to engage, the Venatori were much more inclined to retreat and not face potential death. The lyrium warriors must have heeded their commands, at least in part, for those they met on the way out were few in number, and almost never in groups of more than two. The three in front of her were able to handle them without Khari's help.
Leon's teacher paused in front of one door, eyes narrowing. "Get him out," she said gesturing further down the same hall. "I'll take care of the research. Don't wait upâI can find my own way back, and you need a healer." Without pausing to allow argument, she opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her.
The rest of the path out was straightforward, and though they were slow, their progress was steady. By the time they were loaded up onto their horses and a few miles out, they could see a plume of smoke rising from Kasos, orange tongues of fire lighting up the windows.
Though they traveled through the night, Leon did not stir.
Khari glanced between the others, registering the looks on their faces and concluding that it was probably going to be difficult to survive springing it. Not that they had much choice, anymore. Lucius had to know they were here, and he wasn't just going to let them go without pushing them into it. Sheathing her knife, she went for the greatsword on her back instead, shrugging her shoulders. âOkay. I mean, it's gonna be hard, but we knew that already. Might as well just go do it."
Hell, maybe if they could just kill Lucius, that would be enough to at least give them a chance against the rest. One thing she'd learned during her time with the Inquisition was that leaders, whether they were the best fighters or not, were absolutely necessary. Even big, scary powerful forces tended to fall to pieces if they went down. They'd probably only won at Adamant because they'd managed to fuck with the way the hierarchy went among the Wardens there. Corypheus knew it, too, considering all the trouble he'd gone to in his attempt to take out the leaders in Orlais.
Not that she was overly eager to follow Darkspawn logic, but strategy was strategy, and they knew what theirs had to be. All they had to do now was give it their best shot. And she had faith that it'd be good enough. It always was.
No one seemed that inclined to linger, anyway, but Leon looked a bit in his own head. He was holding a glass vial in his hand, she saw, his thumb brushing over the cork in it repeatedly, like he was trying to decide whether to open it or not. Khari wasn't sure what that was about, but he wouldn't waste the time if it wasn't important, so she shifted to take her turn at point, figuring that'd give him the rest of the walk to decide.
Navigating was just a matter of remembering what was where, and she'd studied the map for long enough to know how to point them at their destination. They didn't encounter any resistance on the way, not even another patrol, making it more likely that it really was a trap. They didn't pass any exitsâthose were further to the front of the building. They'd probably be heavily-guarded, to keep the party from getting out. Didn't really matter much anyway, as far as she was concerned.
The Lord Seeker needed to answer for what he'd done. Khari didn't pretend she knew what was right all the time, but she knew that much.
As it turned out, the main hall's door was already cracked open. Only an ominous silence greeted them at this point, and she couldn't see anything through the crackâit was too dark for that. Pausing, she turned back over her shoulder, shifting her grip on her sword to level it out in front of her. âReady?"
SĂ©verine had sheathed the short sword in favor of her flail, no doubt expecting there to be more room to swing in the main hall. For the moment she held the chain against the handle, both to reduce noise and to prevent accidentally touching anyone with the spiked metal ball on the end of it. "Let's have it done," she said, her expression conveying more anger than nervousness.
Rom nodded as well, and didn't feel the need to voice anything. He'd pulled his mask down, eyes locked at the space where the door was cracked open. He looked a little more tentative than usual, but he'd never backed down from a fight when there was one in front of him. She hadn't seen him take anything today, before or during the mission, so perhaps that was it. This fight was going to be all him, no unfair advantages applied.
Leon used the moment's pause to down the contents of the glass vial, shaking his head a little at the taste of it and replacing the empty vessel at his belt. Ophelia cracked her neck both ways, then nodded.
Jaw set, Leon stepped in front of Khari and pushed the door open.
It swung back smoothly on its hinges, but the motion was clearly a trigger for some kind of mechanism, because all at once, magelight torches lit on either side of the room, brightly enough that Leon's step hitched. He nearly reeled back, but then the sound of a low whistle cutting through the air reached them and he reacted to it seemingly on pure instinct, snatching the arrow out of the air with his right hand. It snapped in his hand, and he actually growled, the sound echoing softly in his helmet. Throwing it aside the remains, he burst forward, making a direct line for the most impressively-armored man in the room.
That manâsurely the Lord Seekerâwasn't wearing a helm, but was otherwise in well-wrought full plate, a halberd resting easily in one hand. Arrayed about the hall in organized columns were Venatori and Red Templars both. Any remaining doubt that this was an organized trap was dashed. The mages volleyed various elemental attacks at the charging Seeker, but by either luck or reflex, he bypassed them all, still barreling forward.
The numbers were bad: there were at least twenty reds here, and ten more Venatori, a few of them wearing the white robes of the most elite mages under Marcus's command. They wasted no time in moving to engage the Inquisition, either.
So Khari didn't waste time going to them. Even she registered a bit of trepidation at the sheer number of opponents to be had here, but even that disappeared when she took a deep breath and let the Haze come over her, sinking into the part of herself that wasâwould always beâhurt and furious and violent. The details around her seemed to sharpen in her vision, in her hearing. The haptic feedback from her body swallowed more deliberate thinking, sharpening her natural instincts. Those in turn drove her forward, the fight-or-flight dilemma resolved in the same way she always resolved it.
Sensation, raw and visceral, hummed beneath her skin when she swung for the first Red Templar to come within range. A shadow who'd gone in for a flank and found her more mobile than expected. Her sword shrieked where it scraped against the crystalline arm-blades on the other woman's body. The dizzy-sick feeling of being so close to the lyrium didn't even register. Not anymore. Khari's lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl; she pushed forward, breaking the lock with a hard step in and changing her angle.
Her blade found the weak spot just under the templar's chestplate, slipping in and bursting out the other side. But these were not so easily put down as any ordinary foe, and she anticipated that, twisting the sword with both her hands and then kicking the woman off the end of it, chopping into the sliver of skin between her gorget and her helmet when she staggered backwards from the blow. She dropped.
A mace caught her across the back of her chainmail, knocking the wind from her and throwing her to the ground. Khari rolled, blindly choosing to angle to the left, just in time to avoid the follow-up, which slammed into the stone floor where she'd just been. Finding her feet, she whirled, putting her back to the wall and dismissing the pain ricocheting up her spine as irrelevant. All pain was irrelevant. Nothing mattered as much as bringing the next one down.
She lunged.
SĂ©verine took on several enemies at once on one of Khari's sides, helping her avoid being surrounded for the moment. The templar's flail swung about in wide arcs, forcing all in front of her to think twice about rushing in. Each time it connected a small burst of red lyrium shards flew through the air, and she was quick to get her weapon moving again, constantly moving. The hits weren't lethal immediately, but all inflicted damage on the fallen templars. The first to die to her weapon was a Venatori whose helm proved insufficient against the spiked ball. The flail crunched through his skull, momentarily getting stuck as a red flood poured out. SĂ©verine had to plant a boot to his chest to free her weapon again.
It was a moment longer than she had at her disposal, and a barehanded knight took advantage on her unshielded side. His lyrium-hardened punch found her ribs on the right side, denting her scale mail and sending her stumbling unfortunately right into Khari mid-swing, with enough force to upset both of their balances. The knight pressed in, a hand grappling around her throat while the other tried to secure her wrist.
After a moment of fruitless struggle, she was relieved when Rom hurled himself onto the knight's back as best he could, his blade already dripping with blood. It was his marked hand he struck with, however, managing to get a hold on the knight's shoulder and unleashing a powerful blast that swallowed that lyrium encrusted upper arm, bursting the rest in a shower of red. Rom lost his grip immediately after, falling to the ground. He was forced to roll away from a downward stab of a less-corrupted Red Templar, who he dealt with quickly, finding an opening and driving his blade up into her throat. SĂ©verine discarded the knight that had grabbed her, and threw herself back into the fray.
Up ahead, Leon had at last reached the Lord Seeker, who was doing his apparent best to keep him at bay with the halberd, which gave him a significant reach advantage. The fact that there were two extremely large Red Templar knights at either side of him was no doubt helping with that, though like Khari, Leon seemed to be unconcerned with pain right now, if he even felt it. Knocking aside a heavy two-handed blow from one of the knights, Leon intercepted a downward swing of the halberd, catching the blade in his hand and using it to pull Lucius forward. He was heedless of the crimson spatter that dropped to the stone, evidence that the blade had cut into the thinner protection offered by the inside of his gauntlets.
Lucius lurched, and Leon had time to get in one powerful blow to the Lord Seeker's face, crunching his nose in with a low crack audible even to Khari. But any chance of a more fatal follow-up was precluded by the intervention of another knight, who drove a spear for Leon, forcing him to take a step back, lest his chainmail fail against the enhanced strength given by corrupt lyrium.
Lucius's face twisted. "Ugh, barbaric. I had almost managed to forget you were Ophelia's brat." He didn't dwell on the injury, though, not even as it gushed blood down his lips and chin. Instead, he firmed his grip on his halberd and swung again.
Ophelia herself had torn into the sole cluster of archers, including the one who fired the first arrow. He was unmoving on the floor, but there were plenty of others, and no few of them had drawn blades now that she was so close. Her ferocity was more contained than Leon's or Khari's: she placed her blows for maximum effect, every time. Already she'd felled three, but four more were surrounding her, and she clearly knew it, launching herself at one and physically bowling the smaller woman over to get clear of the knot. The moment any of them was truly surrounded would quite possibly be their last one.
Khari had found herself in a similar predicament, her mobility hampered by the fact that she didn't have much room to make use of it. She'd been separated from SĂ©verine by several yards as the fight wore on, and enemies had filled the gap. Between the suppressing fire some of the Venatori had shifted to using and the three Red Templars she was currently trying to handle, she'd seen better positioning, to say the least. That fact registered only dully, however, and she parried the next incoming blow, then swung around to sidestep the next. The third swept her feet out from under her with his poleaxe, and she went to the ground.
She attempted to roll away, but didn't make it too far before a heavy boot landed on her shoulder, hard enough that she'd definitely have a bruise if she survived this. The spearhead that followed was less merciful, punching through her chainmail into her belly. She shouted, a harsh yell as much fury as painâmore. One-handed, she swung her sword in a mighty arc, catching the templar's throat with the tip of the blade more by luck than anything. Clearly, they were not used to fighting those who could function in pain almost as well as they could.
Her wound pulled as she regained her feet, ducking under another swing of the poleax and stepping in, driving her pommel up into that one's chin. She could sense the other coming in behind her and dropped back to the floorâhis blade ran through his ally instead of her, and Khari drew the knife from her hip, stabbing it viciously into the back of his knee, where both armor and crystals were less protection. He didn't react overmuch, but she'd clearly severed something important, because the leg collapsed underneath him, leaving him to try and rebalance. He didn't get the chanceâstill on the floor, she drove her sword up into his lower back, severing the flexible cord part of his spine. A chunk of crystal fell away when she pulled the sword back out.
She was slower to rise this time. Slow enough, in fact, that a Venatori's well-aimed ice spell caught her left leg, sealing it to the floor. Two more followed, until she was encased in ice from her foot to her hip on that side. The mage, one of the white-robes, readied what seemed to be a much larger spell, from the way it crackled and hissed at her fingertips.
A short crossbow bolt found the mage's side, lodging between her ribs. Rom had loosed it, and rushed the mage leading with his shield. Rather than unleash the charged lightning spell at the temporarily rooted Khari, she turned it on Rom to protect herself, unloading a torrent of disorganized lightning out in front of her. The spell was wide enough to catch several Red Templars caught in its path, but Rom was in the center of it, and received it in full.
Khari had seen Rom shrug off worse spells like they were mere annoyances, but this one stopped him in his tracks, and when the blinding light faded, the Inquisitor was shaking violently on the spot, barely able to remain upright. A knife-armed Red Templar took advantage, plunging the blade into his lower back, likely only missing the spine because it was a moving target. He withdrew the knife as quick as it went in, flipping it into a backhand grip to plunge it in somewhere much higher, but Rom managed to turn and catch his wrists. He was driven back to a wall, and there the two grappled for a moment, until Rom, smoking skin and all, headbutted the Red Templar to stun him. Gaining control of the man's hands, he pushed them down hard, plunging the dagger into the man's own abdomen. A swift knee up into his head was enough to knock him flat on his back, and knock him out cold while he bled.
In the meantime SĂ©verine had rushed in on the mage. Her shield glowed with a white light, one that was expelled forcefully when she bashed it across the mage's head, her templar ability purging the remaining mana from the Venatori woman. She dropped to her knees, unable to rise, and SĂ©verine brought her flail around in a long arc, uppercutting and wrenching the mage's head back grotesquely. She tipped over and did not rise.
Several enemies closed around her at once after that from multiple sides, too many to deal with at once. Her flail drove back one, her shield blocked another, but an arrow of all things slipped through two of them and punctured into her abdomen. The hit came just before a shadow rushed in with a low feint followed by a downward slash from the other blade protruding from his arm. It caught SĂ©verine across her unprotected face, opening a bloody line from her forehead above the right eye, across the bridge of her nose and down to her left cheek. She stumbled back, reeling under the blows that followed on her shield and struggling to get a breath with an arrow lodged in her.
By this point, Leon was bloodied, but he'd successfully felled the original two knights with the Lord Seeker. Of course, more had diverted from their positions elsewhere, along with several of the Venatori that had been supporting their allies from the edges of the fight. A fireball struck Leon square in the back; he roared and lunged for the offending mage, closing his hand around her throat and squeezing. Something popped, and he dropped her, leaving a bloody smear where his hand had been and whirling to face the red closest to him.
The shadow attempted to stab him, its lyrium blade tearing a gash in Leon's chainmail like it was ordinary leather, but the commander twisted, avoiding the worst of the blow and taking the appendage in both hands. The eyes showing through the gaps in his helmet were as much red as violet, though the hue was not the same luminescent crimson as that belonging to the templars. It was closer to scarlet, a touch of orange or gold or something else in itâwhatever it was, it had to be the effects of that potion he'd taken before the fight. He gripped the lyrium arm and used it to swing the shadow, picking him up bodily and hurling him the few feet necessary to slam into a pair of Venatori. All three crashed to the ground in a heap; one of the mages was unlucky enough to be impaled on a red lyrium crystal protruding from the shadow's armor.
Another knight moved in behind him, jumping up onto Leon's back and wrenching his helmet off. It clanged against the stone where it hit the ground. Leon heaved, throwing the knight over his shoulder with great effort, bringing his boot down against the gap in the templar's helm where his face was. The knight fell still; whether he was unconscious or dead was hard to tell.
Lucius took the opportunity to slash at Leon's exposed face, splitting open his nose and cheek on the left side, down to the bone. He snarled, teeth bloody, and followed the halberd's retreat, taking hold of it beneath the blade with both hands and pulling. Lucius lost his grip, and Leon tossed the weapon away like a useless trinket. Blood ran freely over his armor, patches of it darkening his plain cloak. How much of it was his as opposed to someone else's was impossible to say, but his strength seemed only to grow with it in either case. Lucius took a step backwards, and another two reds converged upon Leon, who grabbed for the first and caught her by the shoulder, wrenching her head to the side to expose pallid skin, dark veins of corrupted lyrium splayed out beneath the nearly-translucent surface.
Rather than break her neck efficiently, as he'd done dozens of times before, Leon leaned down and bit her, tearing savagely into the flesh of her throat. She screamedâapparently some things were painful enough for even a Red Templar to feel pain. Or perhaps it was fear, instead. Either way, it didn't last long before she was limp, and Leon threw her down like chattel.
Abruptly, he staggered; the other Red Templar's longsword erupted from the center of his chest, coated in bright red blood. The shield on the templar's other arm lashed forward, catching him in the back of his head, and Leon fell to the floor, unmoving.
Ophelia lowered her shoulder into the templar responsible, carrying him away from his opportunity for any final blows, and shouted over the din. "We need to leave, now!"
That was probably true, but firstâKhari had only two things she wanted to do. And since she was temporarily free of assailants, she was damn well going to do both.
The Lord Seeker was dangerous even when disarmed, something he proved when he dodged her first swing entirely, drawing a sidearm from his hip and slashing for her exposed face. She leaned back out of the way of it and retaliated, sweeping low for his legs and stepping in when he hopped backwards in enough time to avoid it. Her aggression and his current lack of protection backed him up against the wall quickly, and though he managed to land a slash just under her jawline, the long fight with Leon had clearly worn him down, and without a Red Templar's endurance, he could not hold her off forever.
The edge of her sword found his chin, and she drove it up and back, striking the wall behind him with the tip before she wrenched it back out. Once that was done, she hurried back to Leon, where a predicament presented itself. She couldn't carry him with her sword strapped over her back, nor would one arm be sufficient, especially not in her injured state. Grimly, she tossed the blade aside, kneeling to situate him over her shoulder as well as she could. He was heavy, probably moreso than anything she'd managed to lift in training yet, and his height made it even more awkward. Still, she did her best to distribute his weight the way Mick had taught herâevenly across her shoulders.
Her wound damn near screamed at her when she tried to stand; she pulled a breath in through clenched teeth and returned to her knees. Maybe it would work if she were already standing, but there was no way she could get there on her own.
"On your feet!" Rom shouted from behind her. Before she could make the attempt his arms were looped under hers. "Now." He lifted with her, and the two sets of legs proved sufficient to get Khari's feet under her, stable enough to carry Leon, though the progress would be slow.
Rom came around in front of her, intercepting a Red Templar on the way. He blocked a downward strike with his shield, plunging his blade multiple times into the enemy's abdomen until the wounds were big enough for some of the man's innards to spill partway out. He shoved him off and turned to look at Khari, spattered head to toe with blood, and almost no way to tell how much of it was his. He gestured for her to get moving, and continued guarding the way forward for her. Somewhere behind her the clashes of metal and lyrium on shield and armor continued, as SĂ©verine watched her back. A pained grunt escaped her when she took another hit, but Khari didn't hear the sound of her falling, and that was all that really mattered at this point.
Ophelia led the way out, directing them no doubt more from her mental map of the place than anything. As Khari had predicted, the Templars and Venatori both were considerably less organized without their leader, and though the reds still seemed willing to engage, the Venatori were much more inclined to retreat and not face potential death. The lyrium warriors must have heeded their commands, at least in part, for those they met on the way out were few in number, and almost never in groups of more than two. The three in front of her were able to handle them without Khari's help.
Leon's teacher paused in front of one door, eyes narrowing. "Get him out," she said gesturing further down the same hall. "I'll take care of the research. Don't wait upâI can find my own way back, and you need a healer." Without pausing to allow argument, she opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her.
The rest of the path out was straightforward, and though they were slow, their progress was steady. By the time they were loaded up onto their horses and a few miles out, they could see a plume of smoke rising from Kasos, orange tongues of fire lighting up the windows.
Though they traveled through the night, Leon did not stir.