𝓑𝓵𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓼 | | Cantarella x Pontiff

[Pontiff]

The cries of the damned and haunted were a chilling song this fateful night. The night sky alit with torch fire and burning corpse alike. Humans, Elves, Dwarves and even the repulsive Darkspawn. They all burned the same under the power of the flame as smoke filled the air and death plagued the senses. The smells of the deceased and burning, fresh crimson blood and the black ichor of the vile spawn. Sounds of resonant metal clanging against shields. The deafening sound of flesh being pierced and wrought asunder. War was a vile, repulsive deed -- even so it at times was a necessary sacrifice.

The Fifth Blight led by Archdemon Drukeer was nothing short of a devastating tide. One that quickly forced the neighboring countries of Ferelden and Orlais to put aside their differences and stop this Blight before they were brought to their knees in its wake. This was their last stand. The Grey Wardens needing the combined forces of the two to keep the army and Archdemon occupied long enough for them to get in close enough and land the final blow. They would be praised as heroes. Tales sung about the chivalrous and noble Grey Wardens that put their life on the line to slay the Old God. While those on the front lines would be removed from history in their grandeur.

"Raaaa!" The well sharpened blade dug into the backside of a Hurlock that cried out in demonic pain before its life was brought null. The lifeless husk dropping to the ground as a silvery armored Chevalier stood atop with labored breath. Sword dug in deep to the fallen monstrosity as one hand gripped tightly onto the pommel and the knight let his head rest just a moment. His helmet clinking against the back of the armored gauntlets.

"How much longer do we have to hold out! Those damned Grey Wardens!" A heavy Orlesian accent rose from behind the hunched over Chevalier who was gathering himself. Another member of his legion, Ser Gerat Strasser wiped the black ichor from his blade on a fallen genlock. The feathery red plumes sticking up from the masked knights that surrounded the man hunched over. Ten of them remained. When they had entered these woods, they stood strongly with thirty experienced and trained Chevaliers and now they were reduced to this.

"They will never stop coming but we have to keep moving forward." The man in the center picked his head up and held it high as he ripped his blade from the corpse of the Hurlock. "The Ferelden Dogs we were to rendezvous with are close. Once we rendezvous with them, we will carry out our task and hold the Darkspawn from pushing further towards the war camp."

"Ser Benoit, Ser Gerat, Ser--" He stopped speaking as the loud cries of an Ogre pierced the woods. It was close by as the sound of toppling wood and crunching timber fell behind the group of knights. All turning their heads and bodies in the direction of the charging beast.

"Ogre!" Ser Gerat readied his blade and tried to backstep away from the grasp of the enraged darkspawn but had been grabbed in its burly fingers. "Gah!". The tightening grip of the Ogre began to crush the plate mail he wore, feeling his ribs and body being crushed in. He raised his sword and stabbed it into the wrist of the Ogre but had only enraged it more as his body was flung into a nearby tree. The sound of crunching bones and denting metal was deafening, even more so than the sounds of the Ogre's cries. Blood splattered from the eyeholes of the masked helmet Ser Gerat wore as his body crumpled lifelessly to the ground as the remaining Chevaliers encircled the Ogre.

In precise movements the Chevaliers worked in tandem. They were the elite troops of Orlais's Army after all. The Ogre being brought to its knees with precision cuts to its tendons on the back of its knees and ankles, before a sword had been rammed through the open mouth of the wailing monster and up to its brain. The tip of the sword ripping out from the tip of its horned skull.

"We need to move, no time to mourn." Ser Benoit yelled.

"Maker help us all..."

-----------------------

Labored breaths and stamping feet drummed loudly on soft soil. A clearing opening up as the Chevaliers broke through the line. This was where they were to meet the soldiers of Ferelden. The bannermen of Earl Aemon but they feared they were too late. Corpses littered the clearing. Ferelden and Darkspawn a like. "There are more darkspawn dead than them. They died well." Ser Benoit slowly walked forward, through the mass of bodies that lay on the ground.

"Do you think there are any survivors?" The masked man asked following behind Ser Benoit. This wasn't good. They were to rendezvous with these very forces that lay dead on the ground. To be a vanguard that pushed deeper into the forest and provide aid to the Grey Wardens save they need it. The Darkspawn were even larger in force than they could have ever predicted or been prepared for. Outnumbered ten to one in every fight they had engaged in before arriving. If not for the delays maybe, they could have arrived to save these soldiers that fought with honor to the end.

"What do we do now? Maker knows we nine alone will not make it to the Grey Wardens alive or in time." Even with duty and honor on the line. The Chevaliers were exhausted and pushed to the limit. Hours fighting in these woods to just make it this far and find they had been too late. Even though it felt as if they could each lay down and sleep for an eternity. They had to keep pushing forward even without the reinforcements. They had a duty to uphold. A mission to complete or die trying.

"So much for this being Earl Aemon's 'greatest' fighters." One spoke up and nudging his foot against a dead Ferelden Soldier. If not for the helmet he wore he would have spit on the corpse in disgrace.

"They fought and died with honor. Even if they are Ferelden, the Darkspawn knows no difference, nor do they care. We are all the same to them." They continued to look for survivors, stepping deeper into the clearing. Performing final rites for those that still clung desperately to life, the Chevaliers would dig their blades into the back of the surviving Darkspawns neck as they waded through the corpses.

 

[Cantarella]

This was folly, pure and simple. Madness, even.

Fiora had witnessed her companions fall, one after the other, from her vantage point in the tree cover surrounding the battlefield, where she nocked arrow after arrow, letting each take wing upon the air and seek each target, without fail. But with each darkspawn she felled, another took its place, until she felt she was firing into an anthill, for eventually, the numbers that poured through the tree line were innumerable, and projectiles began to sing through the air after her, bark exploding by her head from the tip of a bodkin arrow and scattering in her russet hair.

Her position forfeit, Fiora cursed, uttered a quick prayer to the Maker and his bride Andraste (with an addendum that she was apologetic for cursing), and, taking a breath she feared may be among her last, she climbed out of the tree stand, took her sidearm shortsword from its sheath... and she charged into the fray, boots squelching in the mud and congealed gore painting the ground. She slid and skidded along the way with each thrust and slash, each riposte and stab.

The rendezvous point. She had to get there, she knew, though how many would follow? How many were already waiting there? Enough that this battle wasn't for naught? Fiora compartmentalized it all; she knew that to despair was to die. In war, the most effective emotion a warrior could have was utmost calm, followed by a righteous fury, a dedication to one's land and people so strong that one would be willing to die for it. And she was not the type to lay down her arms and welcome the embrace of the Maker quite yet.

Pushing through throngs of darkspawn, each swing of her blade rewarded with an arc of brackish ebon blood, her forward trajectory was slowed by the sodden bloody and muddy ground, and the push of bodies swinging at each other. There was an overwhelming stench of spilled entrails, rotted darkspawn blood, and the sweat of terrified and overrun men, At a certain point, even the clumsiest of sword strokes was rewarded, as it was like hacking through a forest, hitting boughs and branches as one went along, though it was uncertain through the haze of blood and activity who exactly she was hitting anymore.

She thought she had gotten to the clearing when out of nowhere... a sudden impact took her right in the middle of her shoulder blades, and a shock of pain that tore the breath from Fiora's lungs. The arrow had pierced through her leather armor and penetrated to the interwoven metal plates underneath, the bodkin point digging deeply into the flesh of her back and just barely missing her lung. Fiora's vision swam, and a thin trickle of blood wove its way down her back. She whirled about, blade drawn, to find the bastard who had killed her, for surely she was a dead man, and she saw it: the genlock archer with his bowstring still pulled taut.

But she was so close. So, so close. If she could just make it to the rendezvous point, just meters ahead, maybe she could at least die knowing that reinforcements had arrived. So, swaying, bleeding and breathless, Fiora began to make the final push. She ran harder than she ever knew she could run, breath coming in the same lathered gasps of a dying horse, bloody foam at her lips.

But she made it. As she pushed into the clearing, the brilliant, dying light of the day, the last rays of sunlight warming her body, her cold, cold body. At some point she had begun to shiver, though at what point, she didn't know. All that mattered was that she was there, she had made it...

The darkness was calling her name, though not the sacred flame she had expected. Breath catching, she stumbled forward, catching herself on a birch tree and sliding down its smooth trunk, leaving a garish smear of crimson along the length of its pristine white surface. She was going to die here, she wagered; but really, was it all worth it? She had taken down numberless darkspawn in her endeavor to get to the rendezvous point. Peering around through bleary eyes, she endeavored to remain awake just long enough to warn the chevaliers that it was a fruitless endeavor, they were all surely lost.

The only hope was that the remaining forces could buy the Grey Wardens enough time to put down the Old God. As Fiora was uncertain that she was fit to wield her sword anymore. A self deprecating chuckle passed her lips as the darkness encroached upon the corners of her vision before overtaking it entirely.

The chevaliers would find her unconscious but breathing, perched halfway reclining against the birch tree against which she had fallen.