"...Hello there pretty Archdemon..."
Who: Maia, Pam, Marian, Sebastian and Alistair What: Killing an Archdemon Where: Beneath a park When: 3/19 Status: complete Rating: PG-13 for blood magic
The ritual had gone well enough, and had been quite fun, even if she’d felt guilty the whole bloody time. But now that they were wading through waves of Darkspawn, and deep underground, Maia knew that she’d made the right choice. She could hear him. The Archdemon. He rumbled in the back of her mind, constantly. It was growing irritating. “Please, Maker. No Broodmothers.”
But she’d heard about missing hikers, so that was likely.
"Why did you have to do that? Here I was, happily slaying Darkspawn..." Marian cut off her rant to to send an arc of lightning sparking across a few hurlocks, then continued, "I'm really never getting over that smell, but anyway. Yes. Broodmothers. If we see one, I'm making Alistair or Sebastian deal with it while I hide behind them."
“No,” Sebastian managed, in between arrows. “Thank you.” He smiled, closing one eye and taking careful aim above them. “There’s a Hurlock up behind that stone.” His shot hit close enough, and the beast shrieked, pitching to the ground.
He’d been worried before coming down here - he’d still been having nightmares, and he’d wondered if he would be more of a burden than a blessing - but so far it had been all right. He’d been able to stay focused, and arguably, he was a better shot now than he ever had been.
Out of the four of them, Alistair was the newest to all of this Darkspawn business, but he hadn’t want to be left out, even if he was still upset about the whole Maia and Zevran thing and hadn’t really said much to Maia since. Of course he didn’t want her to die and he understood why Zevran had offered, but he still wasn’t very happy about it even though he’d given his consent. It was all very complicated.
“I don’t know what a Broodmother is, but it doesn’t sound like I want to.” He hadn’t dreamt about the Deep Roads just yet, his last dream having been when Zevran joined the party. Since receiving his armor and sword, from the dreams, he had actually bulked up some just as Maia had said he would and somehow he’d known how to use the longsword almost the moment he’d picked it up, which was quite strange.
Maia had given Sebastian, Pam and Maia some of the Grey Warden armor she'd found in the closet, and had actually taken some of the leather armor for herself. She liked the protection since her fighting style was more melee mage than she really should be allowed to do, but hey, it worked, didn't it? Maybe not quite the Arcane Warrior, but she'd picked up some tips.
She slammed her staff into a hurlock's face then blasted a fireball with her left hand, stating calmly. "Ogre. Alistair, look pretty and draw its attention. Sebastian aim for it's skull, Hawke, lets blind it."
Where the hell had her girlfriend gone off to?
"Alistair's the pretty one, eh?" Marian quipped. She snorted a bit, playfully, and pointed at Sebastian, "I think he's prettier, and that's if Ogres even swing that way."
Fire came to life in her hands while she teased Maia, though, and she sent it flying towards one of the Ogre's eyes.
“Aw, didn’t know you cared.” Sebastian chuckled, pulling out an arrow and setting up.
The last member of their party soon appeared, running full tilt from a cave of sorts off to the side. Pam still felt bizarre wearing medieval style armor, but she had to admit, it was nice to be able to get up close and personal with these fuckers. “Incoming!” she shouted, hoping to get the big bastard looking at her temporarily, so the others could get a jump.
Alistair hadn’t actually met Marian until today and wasn’t entirely sure how to take her comment, so he simply continued doing what he was doing, attempting to kill as many of the darkspawn that came at them before they could get a leg up on their party. He also had to make sure that he didn’t accidently hit anyone in their party, because it wasn’t as if these passages were very big and he was still getting used to moving around in armor.
Maia flung a bolt of lightning and dodged to the side. Maker, the archdemon was making her head pound. She rubbed at it and groaned. “I’ll be glad when this is all over.”
The ogre roared, swinging a massive club at Alistair!
"Sure you will, until the morning sickness sets in."
Marian probably needed to stop with the remarks, but she couldn't help it. Making quips and banter was the way she dealt with this kind of thing, and she was really grateful that the Archdemon wasn't making her own head pound quite as badly.
Of course, the ogre wasn't really alone. He had friends, and she turned around to focus on a few of them that were creeping up on them. She smacked her staff, blade-first, into the ground and a wave of force rippled out from it, knocking down a few of the genlocks that had gotten closest.
“Behind!” Sebastian shouted, turning to fire as fast as he could at a new wave of monsters. “Bloody hellfire, they don’t stop!”
Pam wasn’t listening; she was just ripping and tearing anything she could get her hands on. Or her teeth. She wasn’t swallowing the damn blood, and honestly, she didn’t care anymore. She wanted this to be done, and preferably everybody to get out of it alive.
As the club came at him, Alistair moved away, as best he could in the armor and brought his sword around into the ogre’s side, not that it did much damage, but it gave him a moment to get out of it’s path and let someone more experienced take it down. “Can we not talk about that?” He said, shooting a glance at Marian then at Maia. The last thing he wanted to be reminded of right now was the fact that Maia was pregnant with his boyfriend’s child.
“It’s not my bloody fault Morrigan isn’t around,” Maia muttered, pointing her staff at the back of the ogre’s head and sending a blast right into it. “We’re almost there, we just need to get around this next choke point and then you’ll see something you really want to be scared of.”
Maia was aware she was the only one here who remembered ever seeing an Archdemon. This ought to be entertaining. But she was getting a bit low on power, and Marian especially was probably not going to be happy with what she’d resort to if she ran out.
Unhappy, but probably not all that surprised. Marian would turn to it too, if she had to, but with Sebastian standing right there she really didn't want to. Maker only knew what the man had dreamt of that he'd felt the need to warn her over. She still wasn't that far with her own dreams.
The tidal wave of telekinetic force she'd thrown down set up a few easy targets for Sebastian's arrows, and she laid down an arc of ice to freeze a few more in place for easy pickings.
"I think I'll feel rather put out if this thing isn't at least twice the size I'm imagining it," She muttered to herself. She pointed her own staff at the Ogre as she turned her attention back to it, sending bolts of flame at it.
“Maker only knows.” Sebastian grit his teeth, taking out the targets Hawke had set up. “Surely the little bastards have to stop sometime?” He was running out of arrows.
Pam had tried to grab a few for the guy when she was ripping her way through shit, but there probably weren’t enough. “Where the fuck is the good part?” she hissed, throwing a freshly de-limbed carcass away. “Was it supposed to be this far underground?”
“It’s as if they just keep multiplying.” Alistair let the others finish off the ogre while he took down a Shriek that had charged at him. His fighting style wasn’t as polished as in the dreams, but he also didn’t seem like someone who had never picked up a sword a week ago.
“They do,” Maia said. “When you dream about the Broodmother you’ll understand why we don’t want to meet one.” She shuddered. Things seemed to clear up enough for them to crawl through something unspeakable, and she led the party through to the other side. Something rumbled and she felt it in her head even as she felt it shake the ground.
The Archdemon was gigantic. Darkspawn were tunneling to create a path for it to reach the surface, and it shook its head as it watched.
After a moment, it turned towards the newcomers, and bellowed. The sound went right to Maia’s bones.
Marian had faced some things in the dreams that she'd considered to be particularly hair raising. A centuries old demon. The Arishok. Templars on bad hair days.
This was something else entirely. She nearly dropped her staff as she stared at the thing, "...Hello there pretty Archdemon..."
Sebastian stared in something approaching terror, but managed to keep it together. “Maker preserve us,” he breathed, keeping his bow at the ready. He’d never imagined anything like this even in his wildest dreams of Kirkwall.
Pam was just angry by now. This fucking thing, its little minions, it had ruined everything; her life was not going to be the same anytime soon and it was because of this. “What are we waiting for?!” she yelled at no one in particular, looking around for more little minions to come at her. “Do what you have to do!”
Alistair had felt it before they’d entered the tunnel, but seeing it was like nothing he’d ever seen before. The Darkspawn and the nightmares certainly hadn’t prepared him for this and he was almost tempted to turn and run, but he knew that that wasn’t an option. He’d wanted to be here and now he had to stay until the end.
Pam's anger was a huge turn on for Maia. She flashed a grin, but didn't tear her eyes from the Archdemon. "Keep that shite off of me."
She shouldered her staff, pulling a knife and slicing it through her wrist as she started to run towards the creature. A red aura surrounded her. A wave of red energy struck the Archdemon, while around it several darkspawn started to spasm violently, before turning against their master.
"Oh bloody hell Maia, that's not even allowed and we're going to have a very, VERY stern talk with each other when this is over," Marian muttered to herself.
She really hoped that Sebastian didn't say anything. They had enough to deal with, without getting into the 'blood magic' debate smack in the middle of a fight.
"Right, keeping the rest off our Commander while she does her job." Marian cracked her staff against the ground, sending out another ripple of telekinetic force. It knocked back a wave of incoming genlocks, which she hoped someone else would then eat or stab to death.
Sebastian saw it, all right, and at literally any other moment he would have started yelling. Blood magic was expressly forbidden in Thedas, mostly because it tended to pull angry wraiths from the Fade - the magical world - into the real one. But right now, he was temporarily going to accept anything that kept them alive. “If we have to kill wraiths after this, woman,” he muttered, hopefully not loud enough to be heard.
Pam just ran interference; she figured it was simplest. The other magic lady would stun the things, and Pam would tear them up. Rip, tear, rip, tear. It helped focus her, and she was at least being helpful.
Alistair had seen Maia use various magics, both in the dreams and over the last couple of hours, but he’d never seen anything like the blood magic she’d just used and he was momentarily stunned, which wasn’t exactly a good thing when there were Darkspawn coming from all sides and it took a Shriek’s claws glancing off his armor to make him snap out of it and he brought his sword around to slice the creature’s arm clean off then glanced at Sebastian, “Careful. That’s almost like saying, what’s the worst that could happen?”
One of the things that Maia learned from her dreams about Thedas was that when it came to Darkspawn, the Wardens allowed pretty much anything, and not even the Chantry had the balls to tell them to stop. With an Archdemon in front of her, and without the people she'd relied on before she needed every edge she could afford. Besides, part of her always wanted to try out the knowledge she'd learned.
But she couldn't respond. She was too busy trying to hit the archdemon with every one of her big spells.
"I should have grabbed a bloody sword." She vaulted off of a rock and right onto the creature's massive head. She stabbed her knife into it's head, and started to boil the blood within.
Marian knew her own reserves were running low. That was dangerous, and not just because she'd be left facing a horde of Darkspawn without anything left to throw at them. Thackery was still at the blockade, and she was still holding up a shield over him. The distance made it even more difficult to maintain.
She sighed a bit. There were a bunch of hurlocks in the background with arrows, and instead of using more draining offensive spells she put up a globe around them to block the projectiles, "Whatever you're going to do, Maia, I sincerely hope you do it soon."
Or she was going to have to drop the shield on Thackery and hope for the best. Marian really didn't want to do that.
Sebastian would have said something just as sharp, but then the woman was simply up there. It was all happening so fast. He wheeled and shot an enormous genlock - maybe an Alpha, if its irritated response was any indication - that had been heading for their little party. “Magic user!”
Pam heard the man shout, and simply turned, flinging herself on the ugly thing. “Honey, it ain’t got shit on me!”
If Alistair had another weapon, perhaps he would have offered Maia his sword, but doing that would leave him an open target and that wouldn’t be very smart. So instead he simply continued to kill as many Darkspawn as he could while Maia did what she was doing.
“Go back where you came from,” Maia shouted as ichor started to leak out of the Archdemon’s eyes. She started to stab the everloving hell out of its head and its eyes, using all of her magic all of it, sending bolt after bolt into the wounds. All the while she kept up the blood boiling spell.
The creature bellowed, bucking its head up towards the cavern roof. There was a flash of blinding light, then a shockwave that burst from the demon’s head and from the woman on top of it. The wave bowled over everything in it’s path, shattering rock and bone near the epicenter.
The Archdemon's death knells felt like something was literally shrieking right inside of Marian's skull. It was painful to the point of overwhelming and for a few seconds she thought she might actually pass out.
But there were people around her and the shockwave was about to send rock and dust all over them. She closed her eyes and braced herself against her staff, straining to keep the shield that she'd created up.
She managed it for the first few seconds as things rained down over them, before she had to let it go. Hopefully that was enough and no one was too injured.
Sebastian went flying, suspended in space until he hit rock, and hit it hard. He felt something break, in his arm or shoulder or something, but he got back up. “Run!” he called, hoping the others would follow his lead while he went toward Maia.
Pam ignored him, running instead toward her girl. Vampires had super strength and speed; this was hers to do. “Out of the way, boy scout!” The creatures were running past her, but Pam didn’t much care; she wasn’t letting Maia fucking die down there. Baby or no baby, she was getting out alive.
Alistair wanted to cover his ears, but that wouldn’t have done anything since the screams of the Archdemon were in his head. Attempting to shake it off, Alistair watched the scene playing out in front of him, gaze landing on Maia then Pam and Sebastian both going after her. Instead of going to them, he headed towards Marian, “You okay?” If he was exhausted from the fighting he’d done, he couldn’t even imagine how Marian felt after using as much magic as she had. He may have still been new to the dreams and the world of Thedas, but he knew that the magic took a lot out of Mages when overused.
Maia was pale, and dead to the world. She lay next to the deceased Archdemon, one hand still gripping her dagger, and the cut on her forearm scabbed over. Her breathing was short and ragged, but she had breath.
"I'm... just fine, really!" Marian gasped out. She wasn't sure if she was glad someone was running towards her or not. She staggered to her feet, still clinging to her staff, and offered Alistair a weary smile, "Thanks for checking on me, though."
Mainly, she wanted to make sure Maia was okay and that the rest of them would live, "Everyone else is still breathing?"
Sebastian heard Pam yelling, and wisely backed off. He wasn’t particularly interested in stepping into the path of a Fury; one would be able to better reason with a darkspawn. Besides, his head hurt and so did his shoulder.
Pam vaulted down into the crater that had formed, picking Maia up without a second thought. When she heard breath, she relaxed a little, but only a little. “I gotcha,” she told Maia, trying to look and see if there were any major injuries. “Let’s get the fuck out.”
“Of course.” Alistair glanced over towards where Sebastian was and then where Pam and Maia were, “Yeah, I think everyone else is alright.” His gaze wandered back towards where Pam and Maia were; where the dead Archdemon was and he realized just how relieved he was that Maia was alright. He may have been upset over the last couple of days because of the whole pregnancy thing, but he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to watch Maia die.
Turning back to Marian, he offered her his arm, “Need a hand? We should probably get out of here.” He hadn’t spoken to Zevran much since he’d given his consent to him and Maia, but he knew Zevran was out there somewhere and he wanted to make sure his boyfriend was alright and apologize for being so jealous and selfish.
Marian was relieved, too. More relieved than she cared to admit. Maia was the only family she had in this country and a part of only a small amount of family members she had left alive. She took Alistair's arm, allowing him to prop her up a bit, then nodded, "Yes. Getting out of here is definitely a good idea. There'll be healers topside for all of us, and Maker only knows how long these mines are going to be stable."