There was no time to linger and hope their allies could break through.
Ithilian had never been of the opinion that they needed them to get the job done. The help was welcome, and it had gotten them this far, but it was always going to be he and Amalia that had to do this themselves. Marcus was too smart to risk letting it happen any other way, but also too keen on their deaths not to risk letting it happen at all. Not only that, he wanted to kill them himself, just as much as they wanted to kill him. Two sides of a battle of over a decade, steadily reducing each other's lives to ruin.
It ended here, somewhere in this tower. The barrier had them trapped in a stairwell, but rather than pincer them with Venatori on both sides, they only rushed down from above. Ithilian already had his blades out, and Parshaara first found the blood of an overeager Venatori trying to leap down on them from several stairs up. His throat was opened as a result, but more were immediately coming. The tower's stairwell was open and round, a railing separating them from a very long fall. Ithilian was quite certain he'd never been in such a tall building before.
Though there was more up than down, it was down that the Venatori clearly intended for them to go, as a large group of Venatori, mages and warriors alike, continued down towards them, a few slinging spells already. "Can't fight them here," he said, remaining calm. There were too many, and while the terrain was tight and would nullify number advantages in melee, the mages would still be able to fire at them with impunity from across the gap. "Need to move down."
Amalia tsked softly, reaching down to her belt and lobbing something there up and over. The sound of glass shattering followed, and several thuds where Venatori bodies hit the staircase further up. Probably just a temporary unconsciousness, and not enough to thin out the ranks so they could climb instead of descending, but it gave them a few less to worry about. She glanced down the stairwell, then started to follow it.
It became clear quite quickly that they were being herded, as the Venatori recollected themselves, now considerably more cautious of the danger even just the two of them presented, and their focus shifted to gaining ground rather than doing damage outright, a variety of spells aimed for their feet to keep them moving, and a choir of clanging blades to greet them should they attempt to push against the tide. It was in this way that they came to the bottom of the staircase, an unassuming closed wooden door their only clue as to what lay below.
Amalia's back hit it first; she grimaced. It was obvious enough what the course of action was here, and also obvious that it was one they were meant to take. Fighting on Marcus's terms was far from idealāhe had proven on many occasions to be possessed of not only considerable magical talent to compliment his physical capabilities, but a predator's intuition and a very cunning knack for traps and other such defenses. They did best when they caught him by surprise, and in this case, they clearly had not.
She reached across, putting her hand on the knob of the door, which remained harmless for now. "I'm opening it," she warned him, before wrenching it and pushing in at the same time, turning herself so that she stepped in weapons-first.
As with the entrance, a golden barrier of some sort shimmered behind her, but chances were good that it would allow Ithilian to pass as well.
Ithilian would never say he trusted such a thing, but there wasn't much choice here. It was that or fight the horde of Venatori until they were overwhelmed. Gritting his teeth, he threw himself through it, expecting the worst on the other side.
At first, all that met his eye was darkness. The barrier washed over him like hot water, on the verge of burning, but not quite there. When his vision returned on the other side of it, there still wasn't all that much light to speak of.
The chamber they'd landed in was quite largeāprobably taking up the whole level by itself. Peering through the gloom made it possible to tell almost immediately what it had been designed for. Various sinister-looking instruments of pain hung from the walls or ceiling, or lay on plain wooden tables lining the chamber's sides, glinting in a way that somehow suggested malevolence.
The centerpiece of the room, however, was clearly what had captured Amalia's attention. Another table, this one somewhat longer and wider than the others, part of it angled up at a slight incline. The straps and metal bands around it suggested that it was meant to hold a person and keep them held; the indistinct reddish stains could only mean it had seen use. Parts of it were rustedāindeed the whole thing looked quite old.
"Do you like it?" The smooth, oily tone of the voice could only belong to one person.
The sharp sound of a finger being snapped echoed throughout the room, and the light level went up a few notches, allowing them to see all the way across the chamber. Marcus stood in deep shadow, flanked by two others in the white robes of the Venatori elite: a young elven woman with a swarthy complexion and an even younger man with ash-colored hair.
The visible half of Marcus's face curled into a smile. "I regret that I could not host you once more in that old fool's dungeons, but I did manage to salvage this particular piece. Please forgive its state of disrepairāit has seen no guests since you, dear kadan." Amalia's jaw visibly tightened, but she was clearly wary of approaching. It wasn't hard to tell whyāthis had the feel of a trap to it, and the last thing they ought to do would be to seize the bait and walk right into it.
Always with the flair for the dramatic. It had a way of making Ithilian feel sick. He knew well what Marcus had done to her, in a time before they'd even met in Kirkwall's Alienage. He knew well that Marcus enjoyed doing it, that the memory likely gave him pleasure, as did the thought of doing it again. To both of them, no doubt, but to Amalia in particular, because their relationship had been one of trust, at least in one direction, before it was one of hatred. They just wanted Marcus dead so they could have peace in their lives. Marcus wanted them dead, eventually, once he was satisfied.
As was almost always the case in their engagements, Marcus would be the one doing most of the talking. Even with half his face burned away by Parshaara he couldn't be silenced. And even in every inconclusive fight he could never get a rise out of them. Their cool heads had kept them alive a number of times. The Ithilian of a decade ago would've long gotten himself killed by now.
Ithilian was swift to change weapons, sheathing his blades and drawing his bow. He drew back an arrow, aiming it first at Marcus, then deciding to direct it to his side, at the ashen-haired man. He was not interested in talking.
Beside him, Amalia chose a similar tactic, launching a throwing knife across the room towards the woman. They'd fought her a few times as wellāLeta, her name was, and near as they could discern, she was some kind of apprentice or acolyte of Marcus's. Certainly one of the more dangerous Venatori.
Both arrow and knife were struck from the air. The man met the arrow midair with a heavy stone projectile, while the knife simply clattered off an orange-colored barrier. Marcus himself didn't move at all, instead sighing, as though it was all some kind of minor inconvenience and not yet another iteration in a fight for the lives of everyone involved.
"Well, never mind, I suppose. There's always later." With a lazy hand gesture, he signaled the other two forward, and they went without hesitation. The man drew a heavy mace from his back; Leta preferred the traditional staff wielded as a weapon almost more than a focus. Each threw a heavy fire spell in advance of their passage, forcing Ithilian and Amalia to move or be baked where they stood.
Amalia went left, towards Leta, drawing a second, longer knife from a sheath at the small of her back. Perhaps unwilling to risk the floor, she instead leaped onto one of the tables, sending several sharp bladed objects clattering to the floor beneath it.
Rather than replace the bow at his back Ithilian dropped it, letting the quiver fall as well. He doubted they would be much more use in the fight, and there would be benefit in fighting lighter. These others needed to be dealt with before they could focus on Marcus. Sacrifices to soften them up, though he didn't doubt Marcus had invested considerable time in training them. With Amalia engaging Leta, Ithilian cut off the approach of the mace-armed Venatori.
He slid under the thrown fireball, the spell blasting against the wall behind him, and drew his sword and dagger, meeting the first downward swing of the mace with a deflection that sent sparks flying from the fire enchantment on Parshaara. Immediately he was able to drag his blade up across the man's upper arm and slice open the white robes there, landing the first hit. The pommel of the mace came up in retaliation, but Ithilian anticipated and caught it, turning the momentum against him by hurling him around in a half circle, throwing him into a wooden table and tipping it over, possibly close enough to disrupt Leta's focus for a moment.
It seemed to have an effect of some kind, if the low oath she hissed out was any indication. It looked like she might have released her spell too early, the telekinetic burst forcing her a step backward even as she threw it at Amalia and followed it the rest of the way in, swinging for center mass with the wickedly-bladed end of her staff. The other end was already catching fire, the first hint that the follow-up would be a close range incendiary spell.
Amalia deflected the staff-blow with her dagger, still slightly off-balance from the concussion spell. Rather than trying to force herself steady, she fell into a roll, coming up at Leta's side and slashing at her arm before the flames could fully manifest. They'd both grown much more experienced at fighting mages over the past few years, even compared to their time in Kirkwall. Marcus trained his to be capable physically as well, which hadn't usually been a problem, back then.
Ducking under the elf's elbow, Amalia forewent the opportunity to try and attack her from behind, using her momentum to hurl a pair of knives at Ithilian's foe instead. Planting her hand on the ground, she attempted to sweep Leta's legs out from beneath her.
Leta jumped back, narrowly avoiding the sweep of the knife and thrusting one of her hands forward. The spell she used threw them apart with another blast of force, probably an attempt to better position herself to use her weapon's superior reach.
Amalia's knives flew to their target, striking him in the upper back near the shoulder of his weapon arm just as he was about to swing. It was an opening Ithilian seized on, not by slicing with his blades but by driving his knee up hard into the man's face, wrenching his head up and knocking him flat onto his back beside the tipped table. He plunged down at him with his blades, the killing blow with his dagger just pushed aside by the Venatori's free hand, the mace able to block his sword. He wouldn't last much longer though, as Ithilian had the superior leverage.
"Kadan!" That was the only warning Ithilian got before a flash in the corner of his eye alerted him to an incoming chain lightning spell. It was just enough. Ithilian had suspected Marcus wouldn't wait much longer, and he was just able to side step it, leaving his grounded and dazed foe in favor of using the fallen table as a temporary sort of cover or shield, his blade ready to strike over it.
Marcus's next spell hit the table directly, nearly splitting it in half in the process, though it held well enough to serve its purpose. The man himself threw another blast for Amalia's feet, this one ice. She jumped away in time to avoid the worst of it, though the wall of jagged crystals that resulted forced her closer to Leta.
The Magister himself had followed the spells in, fire blossoming around his hands, but he wisely did not draw within Ithilian's striking range, keeping up the pressure on Amalia instead. Planting a foot in Leta's chest, she shoved the other woman as far away as she could to buy herself time and lunged directly for Marcus, forcing him three steps backwardāand now within range.
Ithilian planted a foot on the edge of the tipped table, launching himself into the air at Marcus, but the intent of Amalia's attack was something he read easily enough, as they often made attacks with little chance of success in order to create openings for each other. He was able to turn instinctively and find Ithilian in the air, throwing up a hand and hitting him with a directed telekinetic blast. It clotheslined him to the ground on his back.
He rolled away from the flames that erupted from Marcus's fingertips, the Magister's back covered by Leta re-engaging Amalia. Marcus rushed forward through the smoke after the spell was through, swinging flaming fists at Ithilian. He dodged and was forced backwards, eventually seeing a strike well enough to block and make a slash of his elven blade into Marcus's side, opening up a bloody line.
Ithilian was about to rain more down on him when the mace collided with his upper back, leaving a bloody gash and pitching him forward. Marcus swung in the opening, a punch leaving a nasty burn across the left side of his jaw and forcing Ithilian back again. The mace armed Venatori wrapped his arms around him from behind, grimacing from the effort required after the wounds he'd suffered. For the moment he pinned Ithilian in place, and forced him to lash out with a kick to keep Marcus back.
Amalia obviously noticed, breaking off from Leta with a short thrust of her hand to shove the other woman back. It wouldn't last more than a second, but she used the time to remove another small knife from her belt. It cut through the air with a high-pitched hum, passing Ithilian's face closely enough that he could feel the ripple as it flew. A wet squelch signaled that it had sheathed itself in the ashen-haired man's eye. Immediately the arms holding him slackened, but did not fall away entirely, and the Venatori started to tip backwards.
Amalia paid for the interventionāthe time it had taken to aim and throw allowed Leta to recover and left her open to counterattack. The elven woman's staff cracked over Amalia's temple, and when she staggered back, a powerful blast threw her into the far wall, where she bounced off with a dull noise and crumpled to the ground, coughing and struggling to find her knees as Leta advanced.
Ithilian threw an elbow backwards, aiming for the knife in the Venatori's eye, but he missed, hitting the nose instead. Either way, the mace-armed disciple of Marcus fell away, though he wasn't dead yet. Probably not a threat for the moment, at least not compared to Marcus. Amalia was going to need time to recover, and recovering wasn't going to be easy with Leta keeping up the pressure. It meant Ithilian had to fight Marcus alone for the time being. Neither of them had ever had much success alone, but there was no alternative. He lowered his stance, readied his blades, and locked his eye on his opponent.
Marcus drew a single long dagger of his own from his hip, longer than Parshaara but not reaching the length of his elven short sword. Ithilian was quick enough that engaging him without weapons was less than ideal. Marcus pressed the attack, mixing melee attacks with lightning fast close-range spells, with almost no time used to cast and throw them. What they lacked in power they made up for in speed, and the first few all connected. A jolt of lightning to his leg, a small shard of ice into his side, a telekinetic blast that interrupted his swing and opened him up for a knife slash to the face. He leaned away in time for it to only slice his cheek.
He wasn't impossible to anticipate, however, and went for a final blow before it was time, trying to call down a crushing prison on top of him. It was not an easy spell to cast quickly, and it gave Ithilian just enough time to make a swift sidestep and land a slash to the side of Marcus's leg. He wavered, sinking low for a moment, and Ithilian stabbed upwards with Parshaara, aiming for his throat. The attack was deflected by a powerful and sudden telekinetic burst, strong enough to break several bones in Ithilian's right hand. His dagger flew from his hand, landing on the floor.
Marcus's knife stabbed into his side, spilling out blood, and he was driven back until he bumped into the centerpiece of the room, the torture table he'd used on Amalia. Forcefully Ithilian smacked away the arm holding the blade, removing it from his side. He swiped his Dalish sword high, catching Marcus for once by surprise and landing a slash across his brow, cracking the porcelain mask on half his face as well. Marcus grunted in pain, staggering a step back, and Ithilian went for a lunge to end him. Even this, it seemed was a ploy.
Marcus reacted with almost inhuman speed, bending out of the way of the lunge and grabbing Ithilian's left arm by the wrist. His dagger came down in a swift slice at Ithilian's elbow, chopping in deep, almost the entire way through the bone at the joint. His arm refused to obey him anymore; his Dalish sword fell from his hand as well.
"You owe me half a face," the Magister hissed, the knife digging in deeper. His black eyes were wild, alive with the fervor of adrenaline and no small amount of madness. "Since you lack even that, I will have this instead."
His dagger began to vibrate with a magical telekinetic force, and it tore through the rest of Ithilian's arm.
It fell to the floor at their feet, a bloody stump left behind. Ithilian stared at it for a moment, and Marcus at him, no doubt savoring the moment. It wasn't to last, though. With his broken hand he reached up to grab Marcus's collar, and before anything else could happen he'd yanked their heads together, smashing his lack of a face into the Magister's porcelain one. It shattered, revealing a twisted mass of burn scars, angry red and shiny. They flared over Marcus's still-intact eye, from his half-missing brow all the way down to the line of his once-handsome jawline. Parshaara's enchantment had left much of the skin permanently blackened as well, the underlying muscle paralyzed in the shape of a contorted rictus. It did nothing to lessen the impression of insanity.
Snarling, he sliced a deep gash across Ithilian's chest with his dagger, grabbed him, wheeled him around to his other side, and blasted him with magical force across the room. He rolled over once, ending up face down. Consciousness wasn't quite lost, and he could see that Marcus was leaving him to bleed, turning on Amalia instead.
She still fought, having by this stage rolled to her feet and regained her balance. A large wedge was missing from Leta's staff, no doubt where raising it to block in time had saved the Venatori captain from a much worse fate. Without being able to use it quite so effectively in combat, the elf was struggling against Amalia's superior mobility and precision, casting almost purely defensively in an attempt to keep her fleet opponent from overpowering her at close range.
Marcus's intervention turned things around, however, and he caught Amalia by surprise with a heavy blast of ice to her center mass, crystals forming around her abdomen and hips, creeping down towards her thighs and hindering her midstride. She dropped into a roll, trying to crush some of the ice impeding her and reposition herself away from the wall at the same time, but the magic had slowed her considerably. Leta managed to catch her across the head again when she rose from the roll, the bladed edge of the staff opening a deep gash just above her right eye.
Marcus moved in with the knife, allowing Leta to drop back and shoot spells from range. He went in for a low slash first, Amalia just barely twisting out of the way. His follow-up was swift and unexpected; he closed his hand around Amalia's throat and leaned in, speaking too low for Ithilian to hear. More taunts, no doubt.
Whatever he said provoked an immediate reaction; Amalia slashed for his face with the knife she was still holding, opening up a cut on his burned side. He leaned away from the worst of it, and she let her knees buckle, dragging them both to the ground. It at least prevented Leta from doing too muchāwith her master in such close quarters, she couldn't risk hitting him by mistake. But Marcus had not let go of Amalia's throat, and Ithilian could see her beginning to weaken as lack of air took its toll. Marcus's knife found her side: once, then twice, punching through her thick dragonhide leathers with, it would seem, the sheer force of his hate and thirst for retribution.
Ithilian and pain were old friends. He'd known it well before he ever met any of the people that would change his life, even when he belonged to a Dalish clan. This was, without a doubt, the worst he'd felt in his entire life, the loss of his eye included. But even still, it wasn't enough to take him out for good.
The mace-armed Venatori was back on his feet, dragging his weapon towards Ithilian, intent on finishing him off. His progress was slow, the wound to his eye clearly paining him greatly. Ithilian could see Parshaara, just out of reach in front of him. He crawled to it as best he could, grabbing it and ignoring the pains from the breaks in his right hand. Clambering onto his knees, he ignited the flame enchantment on the blade, waiting as long as he could spare.
He pressed the flat of the blade to his severed left arm, and held it there.
The flesh sizzled and burned, and the sight of it was enough to give the Venatori pause, especially considering the fact that Ithilian didn't even scream in pain. The bleeding slowed as the end was cauterized, and even though the room was starting to spin from dizzying pain, Ithilian got to his feet, just in time to avoid a downward strike from the mace. He dodged left, bringing his arm around and slamming the knife deep into the Venatori's back, letting the enchantment go to work. He dropped his mace as he lit up in flames, screaming hysterically and soon collapsing to the ground.
Across the room, Amalia capitalized on the brief moment of distraction as Marcus and Leta realized what had happened. Marcus's knife, inches from once again stabbing into her flesh, wound up in her hand instead, her fingers closing over the naked blade even as she forced herself up fast enough to slam the crown of her head into Marcus's jaw. It loosened his grip on her neck just enough for her to pull in a breath, and with strength dredged up from somewhere, she got her knee between them, shoving him bodily off her and wresting the knife from his grip.
With her own blood-slick hand, she shifted her grip to the handle and brought it down, narrowly missing his heart when he shifted out of the way. It punched into his chest on the right side instead, no doubt finding a lung. In the doorway, the barrier wavered and disappeared.
Behind Amalia, however, Leta was once more in the fight, and the blade on her staff sought and found the other woman's back, hitting just to the left of her spine and emerging from beneath her diaphragm in the front. Amalia choked on a breath and fell, the damaged staff at last breaking off where she'd hit it earlier, leaning at a slight angle where it protruded from her unmoving body.
Noise from outside reached his earsāfamiliar voices, headed towards them. It would seem that the Inquisition had finally arrived. He wasn't awake to see them, as he collapsed forward only a few seconds later.
Ithilian had never been of the opinion that they needed them to get the job done. The help was welcome, and it had gotten them this far, but it was always going to be he and Amalia that had to do this themselves. Marcus was too smart to risk letting it happen any other way, but also too keen on their deaths not to risk letting it happen at all. Not only that, he wanted to kill them himself, just as much as they wanted to kill him. Two sides of a battle of over a decade, steadily reducing each other's lives to ruin.
It ended here, somewhere in this tower. The barrier had them trapped in a stairwell, but rather than pincer them with Venatori on both sides, they only rushed down from above. Ithilian already had his blades out, and Parshaara first found the blood of an overeager Venatori trying to leap down on them from several stairs up. His throat was opened as a result, but more were immediately coming. The tower's stairwell was open and round, a railing separating them from a very long fall. Ithilian was quite certain he'd never been in such a tall building before.
Though there was more up than down, it was down that the Venatori clearly intended for them to go, as a large group of Venatori, mages and warriors alike, continued down towards them, a few slinging spells already. "Can't fight them here," he said, remaining calm. There were too many, and while the terrain was tight and would nullify number advantages in melee, the mages would still be able to fire at them with impunity from across the gap. "Need to move down."
Amalia tsked softly, reaching down to her belt and lobbing something there up and over. The sound of glass shattering followed, and several thuds where Venatori bodies hit the staircase further up. Probably just a temporary unconsciousness, and not enough to thin out the ranks so they could climb instead of descending, but it gave them a few less to worry about. She glanced down the stairwell, then started to follow it.
It became clear quite quickly that they were being herded, as the Venatori recollected themselves, now considerably more cautious of the danger even just the two of them presented, and their focus shifted to gaining ground rather than doing damage outright, a variety of spells aimed for their feet to keep them moving, and a choir of clanging blades to greet them should they attempt to push against the tide. It was in this way that they came to the bottom of the staircase, an unassuming closed wooden door their only clue as to what lay below.
Amalia's back hit it first; she grimaced. It was obvious enough what the course of action was here, and also obvious that it was one they were meant to take. Fighting on Marcus's terms was far from idealāhe had proven on many occasions to be possessed of not only considerable magical talent to compliment his physical capabilities, but a predator's intuition and a very cunning knack for traps and other such defenses. They did best when they caught him by surprise, and in this case, they clearly had not.
She reached across, putting her hand on the knob of the door, which remained harmless for now. "I'm opening it," she warned him, before wrenching it and pushing in at the same time, turning herself so that she stepped in weapons-first.
As with the entrance, a golden barrier of some sort shimmered behind her, but chances were good that it would allow Ithilian to pass as well.
Ithilian would never say he trusted such a thing, but there wasn't much choice here. It was that or fight the horde of Venatori until they were overwhelmed. Gritting his teeth, he threw himself through it, expecting the worst on the other side.
At first, all that met his eye was darkness. The barrier washed over him like hot water, on the verge of burning, but not quite there. When his vision returned on the other side of it, there still wasn't all that much light to speak of.
The chamber they'd landed in was quite largeāprobably taking up the whole level by itself. Peering through the gloom made it possible to tell almost immediately what it had been designed for. Various sinister-looking instruments of pain hung from the walls or ceiling, or lay on plain wooden tables lining the chamber's sides, glinting in a way that somehow suggested malevolence.
The centerpiece of the room, however, was clearly what had captured Amalia's attention. Another table, this one somewhat longer and wider than the others, part of it angled up at a slight incline. The straps and metal bands around it suggested that it was meant to hold a person and keep them held; the indistinct reddish stains could only mean it had seen use. Parts of it were rustedāindeed the whole thing looked quite old.
"Do you like it?" The smooth, oily tone of the voice could only belong to one person.
The sharp sound of a finger being snapped echoed throughout the room, and the light level went up a few notches, allowing them to see all the way across the chamber. Marcus stood in deep shadow, flanked by two others in the white robes of the Venatori elite: a young elven woman with a swarthy complexion and an even younger man with ash-colored hair.
The visible half of Marcus's face curled into a smile. "I regret that I could not host you once more in that old fool's dungeons, but I did manage to salvage this particular piece. Please forgive its state of disrepairāit has seen no guests since you, dear kadan." Amalia's jaw visibly tightened, but she was clearly wary of approaching. It wasn't hard to tell whyāthis had the feel of a trap to it, and the last thing they ought to do would be to seize the bait and walk right into it.
Always with the flair for the dramatic. It had a way of making Ithilian feel sick. He knew well what Marcus had done to her, in a time before they'd even met in Kirkwall's Alienage. He knew well that Marcus enjoyed doing it, that the memory likely gave him pleasure, as did the thought of doing it again. To both of them, no doubt, but to Amalia in particular, because their relationship had been one of trust, at least in one direction, before it was one of hatred. They just wanted Marcus dead so they could have peace in their lives. Marcus wanted them dead, eventually, once he was satisfied.
As was almost always the case in their engagements, Marcus would be the one doing most of the talking. Even with half his face burned away by Parshaara he couldn't be silenced. And even in every inconclusive fight he could never get a rise out of them. Their cool heads had kept them alive a number of times. The Ithilian of a decade ago would've long gotten himself killed by now.
Ithilian was swift to change weapons, sheathing his blades and drawing his bow. He drew back an arrow, aiming it first at Marcus, then deciding to direct it to his side, at the ashen-haired man. He was not interested in talking.
Beside him, Amalia chose a similar tactic, launching a throwing knife across the room towards the woman. They'd fought her a few times as wellāLeta, her name was, and near as they could discern, she was some kind of apprentice or acolyte of Marcus's. Certainly one of the more dangerous Venatori.
Both arrow and knife were struck from the air. The man met the arrow midair with a heavy stone projectile, while the knife simply clattered off an orange-colored barrier. Marcus himself didn't move at all, instead sighing, as though it was all some kind of minor inconvenience and not yet another iteration in a fight for the lives of everyone involved.
"Well, never mind, I suppose. There's always later." With a lazy hand gesture, he signaled the other two forward, and they went without hesitation. The man drew a heavy mace from his back; Leta preferred the traditional staff wielded as a weapon almost more than a focus. Each threw a heavy fire spell in advance of their passage, forcing Ithilian and Amalia to move or be baked where they stood.
Amalia went left, towards Leta, drawing a second, longer knife from a sheath at the small of her back. Perhaps unwilling to risk the floor, she instead leaped onto one of the tables, sending several sharp bladed objects clattering to the floor beneath it.
Rather than replace the bow at his back Ithilian dropped it, letting the quiver fall as well. He doubted they would be much more use in the fight, and there would be benefit in fighting lighter. These others needed to be dealt with before they could focus on Marcus. Sacrifices to soften them up, though he didn't doubt Marcus had invested considerable time in training them. With Amalia engaging Leta, Ithilian cut off the approach of the mace-armed Venatori.
He slid under the thrown fireball, the spell blasting against the wall behind him, and drew his sword and dagger, meeting the first downward swing of the mace with a deflection that sent sparks flying from the fire enchantment on Parshaara. Immediately he was able to drag his blade up across the man's upper arm and slice open the white robes there, landing the first hit. The pommel of the mace came up in retaliation, but Ithilian anticipated and caught it, turning the momentum against him by hurling him around in a half circle, throwing him into a wooden table and tipping it over, possibly close enough to disrupt Leta's focus for a moment.
It seemed to have an effect of some kind, if the low oath she hissed out was any indication. It looked like she might have released her spell too early, the telekinetic burst forcing her a step backward even as she threw it at Amalia and followed it the rest of the way in, swinging for center mass with the wickedly-bladed end of her staff. The other end was already catching fire, the first hint that the follow-up would be a close range incendiary spell.
Amalia deflected the staff-blow with her dagger, still slightly off-balance from the concussion spell. Rather than trying to force herself steady, she fell into a roll, coming up at Leta's side and slashing at her arm before the flames could fully manifest. They'd both grown much more experienced at fighting mages over the past few years, even compared to their time in Kirkwall. Marcus trained his to be capable physically as well, which hadn't usually been a problem, back then.
Ducking under the elf's elbow, Amalia forewent the opportunity to try and attack her from behind, using her momentum to hurl a pair of knives at Ithilian's foe instead. Planting her hand on the ground, she attempted to sweep Leta's legs out from beneath her.
Leta jumped back, narrowly avoiding the sweep of the knife and thrusting one of her hands forward. The spell she used threw them apart with another blast of force, probably an attempt to better position herself to use her weapon's superior reach.
Amalia's knives flew to their target, striking him in the upper back near the shoulder of his weapon arm just as he was about to swing. It was an opening Ithilian seized on, not by slicing with his blades but by driving his knee up hard into the man's face, wrenching his head up and knocking him flat onto his back beside the tipped table. He plunged down at him with his blades, the killing blow with his dagger just pushed aside by the Venatori's free hand, the mace able to block his sword. He wouldn't last much longer though, as Ithilian had the superior leverage.
"Kadan!" That was the only warning Ithilian got before a flash in the corner of his eye alerted him to an incoming chain lightning spell. It was just enough. Ithilian had suspected Marcus wouldn't wait much longer, and he was just able to side step it, leaving his grounded and dazed foe in favor of using the fallen table as a temporary sort of cover or shield, his blade ready to strike over it.
Marcus's next spell hit the table directly, nearly splitting it in half in the process, though it held well enough to serve its purpose. The man himself threw another blast for Amalia's feet, this one ice. She jumped away in time to avoid the worst of it, though the wall of jagged crystals that resulted forced her closer to Leta.
The Magister himself had followed the spells in, fire blossoming around his hands, but he wisely did not draw within Ithilian's striking range, keeping up the pressure on Amalia instead. Planting a foot in Leta's chest, she shoved the other woman as far away as she could to buy herself time and lunged directly for Marcus, forcing him three steps backwardāand now within range.
Ithilian planted a foot on the edge of the tipped table, launching himself into the air at Marcus, but the intent of Amalia's attack was something he read easily enough, as they often made attacks with little chance of success in order to create openings for each other. He was able to turn instinctively and find Ithilian in the air, throwing up a hand and hitting him with a directed telekinetic blast. It clotheslined him to the ground on his back.
He rolled away from the flames that erupted from Marcus's fingertips, the Magister's back covered by Leta re-engaging Amalia. Marcus rushed forward through the smoke after the spell was through, swinging flaming fists at Ithilian. He dodged and was forced backwards, eventually seeing a strike well enough to block and make a slash of his elven blade into Marcus's side, opening up a bloody line.
Ithilian was about to rain more down on him when the mace collided with his upper back, leaving a bloody gash and pitching him forward. Marcus swung in the opening, a punch leaving a nasty burn across the left side of his jaw and forcing Ithilian back again. The mace armed Venatori wrapped his arms around him from behind, grimacing from the effort required after the wounds he'd suffered. For the moment he pinned Ithilian in place, and forced him to lash out with a kick to keep Marcus back.
Amalia obviously noticed, breaking off from Leta with a short thrust of her hand to shove the other woman back. It wouldn't last more than a second, but she used the time to remove another small knife from her belt. It cut through the air with a high-pitched hum, passing Ithilian's face closely enough that he could feel the ripple as it flew. A wet squelch signaled that it had sheathed itself in the ashen-haired man's eye. Immediately the arms holding him slackened, but did not fall away entirely, and the Venatori started to tip backwards.
Amalia paid for the interventionāthe time it had taken to aim and throw allowed Leta to recover and left her open to counterattack. The elven woman's staff cracked over Amalia's temple, and when she staggered back, a powerful blast threw her into the far wall, where she bounced off with a dull noise and crumpled to the ground, coughing and struggling to find her knees as Leta advanced.
Ithilian threw an elbow backwards, aiming for the knife in the Venatori's eye, but he missed, hitting the nose instead. Either way, the mace-armed disciple of Marcus fell away, though he wasn't dead yet. Probably not a threat for the moment, at least not compared to Marcus. Amalia was going to need time to recover, and recovering wasn't going to be easy with Leta keeping up the pressure. It meant Ithilian had to fight Marcus alone for the time being. Neither of them had ever had much success alone, but there was no alternative. He lowered his stance, readied his blades, and locked his eye on his opponent.
Marcus drew a single long dagger of his own from his hip, longer than Parshaara but not reaching the length of his elven short sword. Ithilian was quick enough that engaging him without weapons was less than ideal. Marcus pressed the attack, mixing melee attacks with lightning fast close-range spells, with almost no time used to cast and throw them. What they lacked in power they made up for in speed, and the first few all connected. A jolt of lightning to his leg, a small shard of ice into his side, a telekinetic blast that interrupted his swing and opened him up for a knife slash to the face. He leaned away in time for it to only slice his cheek.
He wasn't impossible to anticipate, however, and went for a final blow before it was time, trying to call down a crushing prison on top of him. It was not an easy spell to cast quickly, and it gave Ithilian just enough time to make a swift sidestep and land a slash to the side of Marcus's leg. He wavered, sinking low for a moment, and Ithilian stabbed upwards with Parshaara, aiming for his throat. The attack was deflected by a powerful and sudden telekinetic burst, strong enough to break several bones in Ithilian's right hand. His dagger flew from his hand, landing on the floor.
Marcus's knife stabbed into his side, spilling out blood, and he was driven back until he bumped into the centerpiece of the room, the torture table he'd used on Amalia. Forcefully Ithilian smacked away the arm holding the blade, removing it from his side. He swiped his Dalish sword high, catching Marcus for once by surprise and landing a slash across his brow, cracking the porcelain mask on half his face as well. Marcus grunted in pain, staggering a step back, and Ithilian went for a lunge to end him. Even this, it seemed was a ploy.
Marcus reacted with almost inhuman speed, bending out of the way of the lunge and grabbing Ithilian's left arm by the wrist. His dagger came down in a swift slice at Ithilian's elbow, chopping in deep, almost the entire way through the bone at the joint. His arm refused to obey him anymore; his Dalish sword fell from his hand as well.
"You owe me half a face," the Magister hissed, the knife digging in deeper. His black eyes were wild, alive with the fervor of adrenaline and no small amount of madness. "Since you lack even that, I will have this instead."
His dagger began to vibrate with a magical telekinetic force, and it tore through the rest of Ithilian's arm.
It fell to the floor at their feet, a bloody stump left behind. Ithilian stared at it for a moment, and Marcus at him, no doubt savoring the moment. It wasn't to last, though. With his broken hand he reached up to grab Marcus's collar, and before anything else could happen he'd yanked their heads together, smashing his lack of a face into the Magister's porcelain one. It shattered, revealing a twisted mass of burn scars, angry red and shiny. They flared over Marcus's still-intact eye, from his half-missing brow all the way down to the line of his once-handsome jawline. Parshaara's enchantment had left much of the skin permanently blackened as well, the underlying muscle paralyzed in the shape of a contorted rictus. It did nothing to lessen the impression of insanity.
Snarling, he sliced a deep gash across Ithilian's chest with his dagger, grabbed him, wheeled him around to his other side, and blasted him with magical force across the room. He rolled over once, ending up face down. Consciousness wasn't quite lost, and he could see that Marcus was leaving him to bleed, turning on Amalia instead.
She still fought, having by this stage rolled to her feet and regained her balance. A large wedge was missing from Leta's staff, no doubt where raising it to block in time had saved the Venatori captain from a much worse fate. Without being able to use it quite so effectively in combat, the elf was struggling against Amalia's superior mobility and precision, casting almost purely defensively in an attempt to keep her fleet opponent from overpowering her at close range.
Marcus's intervention turned things around, however, and he caught Amalia by surprise with a heavy blast of ice to her center mass, crystals forming around her abdomen and hips, creeping down towards her thighs and hindering her midstride. She dropped into a roll, trying to crush some of the ice impeding her and reposition herself away from the wall at the same time, but the magic had slowed her considerably. Leta managed to catch her across the head again when she rose from the roll, the bladed edge of the staff opening a deep gash just above her right eye.
Marcus moved in with the knife, allowing Leta to drop back and shoot spells from range. He went in for a low slash first, Amalia just barely twisting out of the way. His follow-up was swift and unexpected; he closed his hand around Amalia's throat and leaned in, speaking too low for Ithilian to hear. More taunts, no doubt.
Whatever he said provoked an immediate reaction; Amalia slashed for his face with the knife she was still holding, opening up a cut on his burned side. He leaned away from the worst of it, and she let her knees buckle, dragging them both to the ground. It at least prevented Leta from doing too muchāwith her master in such close quarters, she couldn't risk hitting him by mistake. But Marcus had not let go of Amalia's throat, and Ithilian could see her beginning to weaken as lack of air took its toll. Marcus's knife found her side: once, then twice, punching through her thick dragonhide leathers with, it would seem, the sheer force of his hate and thirst for retribution.
Ithilian and pain were old friends. He'd known it well before he ever met any of the people that would change his life, even when he belonged to a Dalish clan. This was, without a doubt, the worst he'd felt in his entire life, the loss of his eye included. But even still, it wasn't enough to take him out for good.
The mace-armed Venatori was back on his feet, dragging his weapon towards Ithilian, intent on finishing him off. His progress was slow, the wound to his eye clearly paining him greatly. Ithilian could see Parshaara, just out of reach in front of him. He crawled to it as best he could, grabbing it and ignoring the pains from the breaks in his right hand. Clambering onto his knees, he ignited the flame enchantment on the blade, waiting as long as he could spare.
He pressed the flat of the blade to his severed left arm, and held it there.
The flesh sizzled and burned, and the sight of it was enough to give the Venatori pause, especially considering the fact that Ithilian didn't even scream in pain. The bleeding slowed as the end was cauterized, and even though the room was starting to spin from dizzying pain, Ithilian got to his feet, just in time to avoid a downward strike from the mace. He dodged left, bringing his arm around and slamming the knife deep into the Venatori's back, letting the enchantment go to work. He dropped his mace as he lit up in flames, screaming hysterically and soon collapsing to the ground.
Across the room, Amalia capitalized on the brief moment of distraction as Marcus and Leta realized what had happened. Marcus's knife, inches from once again stabbing into her flesh, wound up in her hand instead, her fingers closing over the naked blade even as she forced herself up fast enough to slam the crown of her head into Marcus's jaw. It loosened his grip on her neck just enough for her to pull in a breath, and with strength dredged up from somewhere, she got her knee between them, shoving him bodily off her and wresting the knife from his grip.
With her own blood-slick hand, she shifted her grip to the handle and brought it down, narrowly missing his heart when he shifted out of the way. It punched into his chest on the right side instead, no doubt finding a lung. In the doorway, the barrier wavered and disappeared.
Behind Amalia, however, Leta was once more in the fight, and the blade on her staff sought and found the other woman's back, hitting just to the left of her spine and emerging from beneath her diaphragm in the front. Amalia choked on a breath and fell, the damaged staff at last breaking off where she'd hit it earlier, leaning at a slight angle where it protruded from her unmoving body.
Noise from outside reached his earsāfamiliar voices, headed towards them. It would seem that the Inquisition had finally arrived. He wasn't awake to see them, as he collapsed forward only a few seconds later.