exsiliumlogs | [PLOT] That's no ordinary rabbit

Duncan had been moving through the throngs of undead with a singular driving purpose ever since his encounter with Fiona, to try to find those for whom he felt responsible. He had cut down enemies as a secondary goal. They were in his way.

Fiona's staff felt strange against his back, hastily secured in his belt because he had nowhere else to put it. Periodically, he would knock his head against it. It was that or have it trip him up, a choice of a lesser of two evils.

He saw the flame of the sword before he saw who wielded it. He cut in toward her to take down some of those besieging her from the flank. He fought with uncharacteristic fury, at last coming face to face. "I'm alive," he said immediately, unsure of how easy that might be to tell with him covered in gore.

When Duncan came to her side, she nearly turned to take his head off as well, too focused on the undead around her. But she withdrew her blade when she saw the glitter of his armor, immediately stepping to the side so they could continue fighting without fear of hurting one another. He took care of the trouble she had at her back, to which she was grateful; it allowed her to tear into the enemies at her front and sides, felling them with her sword.

As the group finally began to thin enough for her to turn her attention to her mentor, she had to pause, suddenly afraid that perhaps he had been turned. She lowered her blade to look at him, eyes meeting his. When he spoke, Elissa visibly relaxed. "Thank the Maker for that," she murmured softly. "I didn't even realize you were out here." Leliana was, she knew, and she was keeping an eye on her. "Are you all right?"

"Better now that I've found you," he said, the delivery terse. "I haven't seen Alistair or Cailan yet. Have you?" His eyes never stopped tracking to the sides and behind her, looking for the characteristic shambling movements that would signal trouble.

There was an air of suppressed fury to him. He all but thrummed with it. "It's not safe to stay in one place. We need to stay on the move."

"I have not. I don't think they're here. If they're wise, they'll stay where it's safe." If the fighters present fall, Alistair would need to fight to keep the Hold and the others safe. She knew Zevran and Nathaniel would interfere, at the very least, and Anders would keep the infirmary safe. She could be grateful for that much.

With a nod, she twirled her sword in hand and turned back to the enemies in the distance. "Come on. Let's keep going." But as she made to go, she finally took notice of the staff on his back. "...Duncan, whose is that?"

"Since when have you ever known Cailan to play it safe?" he asked. Alistair he could at least count on to have some strategy about it. His Majesty was more likely to charge out swords flashing and damn the consequences.

He took two steps and froze at the question. The clench of his jaw was hidden beneath the bristle of his beard. "Fiona's. She's dead." His glance at her was sharp.

"With all due respect, as I don't know him as well as you do...I would say that he's never been cautious at any point in his life." Flippant, even under duress, but Elissa wasn't of the mind to want to be polite. She didn't need to with Duncan. "He'll be out on the field in his armor, yes? He shouldn't be hard to spot." And Alistair would be wearing Warden armor, also not difficult to miss.

Elissa paused at his words, uncertain whether she should express her sympathies. He didn't seem like he wanted them. Her features fell just the same and she nodded, a slight bow of her head. "I'm sorry." She did not reach for him or try to coddle his ache. "I'm doubly sorry that we cannot grieve for her until after we've dealt with this."

"No, he is his father's son in every sense of the word." However, the thought of Maric at the moment was an ache, not a salve, so he set it aside. "Indeed. Let us hope not alone." Armor wouldn't save him if he got dog piled. He didn't want to see him die twice.

"She wouldn't want it." He also knew that whether she wanted it or not, whether he did, that would come later. "She'd want us to fight, which is what we're going to do. Keep others safe." Even as he kept his eyes on their targets in the distance, he didn't lose his head to their current surroundings. He knew the dead could come seemingly out of nowhere on the streets and narrow alleys.

"Then I take comfort in the knowledge that Alistair is less like King Maric than people have given him credit." To have two hotheads out on the field would just be insanity at this point. She had enough to worry over. "We can keep our eyes out and go to them if we see them. Alistair can hold his own for at least that long." Cailan, without Warden stamina and strength, might not.

She may not have wanted it, but she would receive it. Not now. Elissa was not religious enough to send a prayer to the Maker for Fiona's safety, but she did send her thoughts to the mage in the hopes that she would return whole...or go back to Thedas without injury. She squeezed the pommel of her family's blade to seal the deal. "I know. Let's get started." And then she was moving with him, eyes everywhere, and it didn't take long for them to encounter the next group of trouble. At least the space wasn't so enclosed as an alley would create; they could fight with ease in the square.

He nodded, his thoughts along the same line. It was good to have others to focus on, to be able to move from moment to moment without the luxury of dwelling. He had dwelt on Ostagar more than he cared to let on. This most recent debacle would likely replace those darker musings for some time to come. Later, though.

Now it was about the flow of battle, something that contained a rhythm of its own. He was cognizant now that all of their enemies weren't necessarily strangers and weren't without their own odd defenses. Magic, who knew what else depending upon what world they came from. He approached the onslaught with that caution in the back of his mind, always aware of Elissa if not precisely watching her nearby.

His blades flashed in deadly arcs, his preferred area of attack low, his method to cripple and then dispatch. He didn't count the fallen. It was no game to see who could best whom. They kept coming in a way that felt all too familiar, and he knew the outcome here would be the same as it would have been at home if he gave in to the burn of muscle or the shortness of breath, pitiless death. So he fought and fought some more, until that swath, too, was cleared and they finally had some breathing room.

Unlike the daggers she had before the fall of Ostagar, Elissa now carried longer blades, heavier and stronger. Though she wasn't as fast as Duncan could move, what she sacrificed in speed she made up for in raw strength. She could keep up with him as he moved, thankfully, not wanting to stray from his side. Her first blade came swinging down and cleaved into the shoulder of the first creature that got close enough; its head came off courtesy of her second sword, the body dropping shortly after. She stepped over it and continued on, never once hesitating to strike down whatever dared to pose a threat.

Elissa spared her companion more than one passing glance, a lingering fear of losing him never quite settling. Ostagar was long ago, yes, but now that Fiona had died or been killed, it was enough to spark the idea once more. She prayed Alistair and Cailan had the good sense to keep out of this or to stay in a group, hoping against hope that they wouldn't find them among the fallen or the undead.

When the group was finally dispatched, she took a moment to stand back and breathe, lifting the back of her arm to wipe sweat from her brow. The flames surrounding one of her swords disappeared long enough for her to sheathe the blade and walk among the bodies they had slain, eyes searching for signs of familiarity. It may not have been wise but she had to know...and after a few moments of looking, she was grateful that none they had killed seemed recognizable. She turned back to Duncan. "Doing all right over there?"

While Elissa walked and checked the dead, he kept his eyes out for any more enemies on the approach. He felt less inclined to have a look after what he had already encountered but didn't mind giving her the opportunity. There was little to be done for any of them at the moment. He wondered if there would be more pyres later as there had been after the bombardment, his mind straying to any occupying thought that kept it from Fiona.

"Hmm?" He turned back in her direction, coming back fully to the present. "Yes, I'm all right. I'd feel better if we could find our companions, of course." He wasn't sure he'd be able to rest until they did or this nightmare ended some other way.

Belatedly, he thought to reciprocate the question. "Are you?"

"Much the same as you, I'm afraid," she said. She wasn't too winded by the fighting, too concerned with the idea that they might perhaps encounter someone else they knew. A good glance around at the bodies said otherwise, thankfully. She stepped over them and moved to rejoin him. "Let's just keep moving." Had he not been a Warden, she might have felt guilt at pushing him to keep going, especially with a friend gone. But she was certain he had seen worse and it was clear that he didn't want to linger on Fiona's death.

She didn't bring out her second sword just yet, knowing it might be better to continue on with only one drawn. She put her hand on his shoulder briefly and squeezed as she walked, letting him go before he took it as a gesture of pity. "I wish we had more room to fight. This city isn't as open as places back home." Even a city as bustling as Amaranthine didn't have the smaller, more narrow streets Exsilium did.

"Yes, let's," he agreed. Standing in one place for too long didn't seem prudent. The undead were persistent in that way. If one found them, others would quickly follow. They didn't need to be overly intelligent to be perceptive.

He offered her a faint twitch upward of one corner of his mouth. He appreciated the gesture and understood it for what it was. He thought that when things had settled, they might have a chance to talk a bit more then. "It's both bane and boon. It's harder for them to overrun us in these narrow ways but easier to get pinned. All the more reason to stay on the move." While on the surface some of the buildings seemed a tempting refuge, if they became trapped inside or overrun, the only way out was up. The refuge could all too easily become a death trap. All it would take was one misplaced jump, and they'd be done for.

"I almost miss fighting normal things," she quipped right back as they went. She slowed every time there was a side-street, quieting so she could look down the alley and see if there was trouble ahead. So far so good. "But beggars can't be choosers. Not when they'd be dead otherwise." Darkspawn, sometimes, were more preferable to demons and even to the undead. As a Warden, your death would be assured if you fell to darkspawn; demons could possess you for years before allowing you freedom and the undead always had masters to bring you back to. And as much as she wanted to engage the person responsible for the mayhem they faced, she was also afraid of what they'd find.

As Elissa rounded towards one of the alleys, a grisly hand shot out and scraped along her arm. Her armor held firm as she turned in alarm, hand reaching back for one of her daggers. She stabbed the monster in the eye and then kicked it, freeing her blade. Flames bounded upward as she drew her sword and swiped at its head, severing it with one clean blow. But there were others behind the one she killed, a small pack that was feasting on the remains of some unfortunate animal they'd cornered. Two fresh kills were more appealing than whatever they'd found; they turned their attentions toward Duncan and her.

"Maker help us both if darkspawn are what pass as normal these days," he snorted. That thought brought the stray, uninvited memory of a darkspawn more unusual than most. The memory of its voice still elicited a shudder after all this time. He almost gave voice to a question that rose on the tail of the thought, glancing her way, only to decide to save it. It had the potential for becoming an involved conversation. Those never mixed well with fighting for one's life.

Duncan's reaction was as immediate as hers. He leaped back to give her the room she needed to finish dispatching her foe and zeroed in on those accompanying it. "Never a dull moment," he growled. "I'm going in low." It made the most sense in order to give her more room with her sword, and it was a position from where he was comfortable and experienced fighting.

He snaked forward with a lunge and struck out with both daggers, slashing the tendons behind the knees of the first two close enough. The lack of support did nothing to take the fight from them. It led to messy and brutal hacking of extremities before he worked his way up to the heads. A dagger to an open mouth and another to an eye ended their thrashing. He yanked them out with force and rolled under the weight of another attacker. How could anything so dead be so hungry?

Elissa nodded absently at his call, letting him sneak in before she set herself to her own attacks. She stepped back to draw a few more out into the open, give them both the space they needed for their fighting. One was quick to follow her, close enough to her first attacker that it must have gotten the idea it could get close enough to bite. She whipped around, sword blazing and slicing into its chest. It did little to deter the creature; it lunged and she ducked down, stabbing upward and catching it in the jaw and up through its head. Only that seemed to force it down and she stood as another came for her.

This one was slower, tentative, and she took full advantage of it to simply lunge and take it down. Her dagger was back out and being plunged into its throat and then its heart. Fingers went for her face and she narrowly avoided its hands as she stabbed once more into its eye as she had the first. It gurgled as its movements finally ceased, arms no longer thrashing. She got to her feet and moved to join Duncan.

That one was tenacious. Not only did it prevent him from completing his roll, it managed to work a forearm under his jaw and force his head back. Gummy spittle dripped across his cheek. He stabbed into its side several times. He could feel the blade slice bone, and still the creature bent for him with gnashing teeth and fetid breath.

Gritting his teeth, he stabbed lower, a dagger above each hip in soft tissue. With a heave of his body and arms both, he flipped the creature up and over him. It landed with a thud on the ground above his head. He rolled and scrambled, the tip of one long dagger against the ground as a fulcrum and the blade brought down decisively across the ropy neck to sever the head.

He huffed out a heavy breath and uttered an imprecation in Orlesian before hauling himself back up to his feet. A quick look around showed a few more shambling in their direction. Before he could think to deal with them, something soft and furry dropped onto the back of his neck from above. He flung a blade aside to grab for it, grateful he wore gauntlets when he brought it around to see a dead eyed squirrel writhing in his grip.

Elissa started when she saw something land on Duncan, eyes wide when she realized what it was. She turned her eyes to the few others coming their way and gritted her teeth. Careful not to get in Duncan's way, she swept down beneath the arms of the first two coming toward them, placing herself right in the middle of the group. Both swords came down and buried themselves into her opponents' chests, forcing them back. She turned only long enough to lash out with her leg, kicking one free of her sword so she could behead it as well.

Though risky, it placed her in perfect range to be a distraction. With one sword between her and the two she passed, she could go on the defensive and draw them over so Duncan could deal with them himself. Her sword kept the other monstrosity at bay, the sound of teeth gnashing heard dimly over the crackle of the fire around her blade, the rune embedded in its hilt doing its job.

He flung the creature hard against the nearest concrete wall and bent for his discarded weapon, eyeing the roof line and walls above them for any more errant undead creatures. In some ways he believed dealing with small, stealthy animals was going to prove more difficult than their larger enemies. "We need to get out of this alley."

He leaped to stab one of them in the back with both daggers buried deep. Using them as macabre handles of sorts, he flung that one into the second and drove both against the wall opposite him. Keeping them pinned with a foot to the small of one of their backs, he yanked out the daggers to slash off the heads, one with a forward swing, the other with a backhanded hack on the same momentum. His skin crawled with the nerve memory of the cold dead woodland animal scrabbling at his neck.

"Probably best," she called back to him, skirting to the side as the one before her shambled across the space between them. Once close enough, she dared an upward cut that seemed to go straight through its through and through part of its head, sending it to the ground. She turned back to Duncan and started his way, nearly tripping when it grabbed her ankle and attempted to sink its teeth into her boot. Elissa snarled, raising her blade once more. "Get off!" she shouted as she brought it down. The first slice missed, coming down across its collar at the awkward angle. She kicked out until it released her and only then did her mark ring true, coming down and cutting through its jawline.

She got back to her feet with little difficulty, stepping as carefully as she could around the bodies of their kills. It was too easy to betray her footing in the shadow of the alley and she was quick to put distance between the carnage and herself until she emerged from the alley. "Maker's breath," she cursed softly, shaking her head as she looked up to the rooftop where the squirrel had leaped from. She turned back to Duncan. "Are you all right?"

He watched with concern, prepared to step in if needed. Exhaustion could make the best fighter sloppy. They had been going at it pretty steadily for some time now with no signs of abatement of numbers. In that respect it reminded him of darkspawn, too.

He waited for her to draw near before leaving the alley with her and made a point of walking down the center of the road, away from the high rooflines. "Thankfully, yes. Spooked more than hurt. I'm shocked I had the wherewithal to drop my dagger. I could have just as easily stabbed myself in the head."

He paused and looked both ways up and down the street. "Do you have any ideas where they might go? I found Fiona between the clinic and the housing complex." It had been a calculated search. There were few times in his life that he regretted being right as much as that. One thing was clear. His habit of going off on his own as frequently as he did needed to change if it meant arriving too late.

"I don't understand how this is spreading from animals to people so quickly, or vice versa. The few of those animals I saw before simply...died off." People weren't eating them, obviously. She rubbed at her forehead briefly as they walked. Worse than darkspawn, she was almost certain of it.

"I don't, actually," she said, though her pace slowed as she looked around. "I came from the housing complex, myself, after I put Atticus under lock. I didn't want him biting anything and getting sick." Or worse, now that she had seen what could happen. "If Anders is all right, then he's probably keeping the clinic safe. I don't think they would go there." And none of them were congregating in the city itself, but they also weren't leaving into the wilds in the outskirts. "What about the Hold?"

"I don't, either. If it's demonic, it's not like any demon activity I've ever seen." He wasn't sure they could make the assumption that it was. Many things in this place were different from home. This could have had any number of causes that had nothing to do with possession. He hesitated, deciding that sharing this information was more important than clamming up about what happened. "Some of them have magic. They're not completely mindless."

He nodded, feeling a small stab of guilt that he hadn't spared a second thought to the mabari. He was too focused on the people he wanted to find. "I'm glad he's well, even if he may be petulant with you when all is said and done for being left out. The last I saw of the clinic they were holding their own."

He gave the suggestion some thought and nodded again. "It can't hurt to check. There may be others there who need help, too."

"No, it doesn't seem familiar enough to be demonic possession. That's one thing to be grateful for." But that left precious few options left to discern what was going on. "Atticus can be angry with me all he wishes. If it keeps him alive, that's all I care about." She couldn't lose anyone, not even her dog. She didn't know if the Initiative could bring him back in one piece.

"Anders is strong. He'll have Nate to back him up. That's all I can hope for." There would be no chance to contact them. She would have to believe they were all right.

Elissa's eyes flickered to Duncan briefly as they walked. "So it could be magic of a different sort, not necessarily demonic--" The comment struck her and she slowed, the gears turning. How would he know that? "...Duncan."

"I doubt he'd hold a grudge for long." He had always liked the dog, from the time he met them at her parents' home to their time on the road to Ostagar. Sensible beast.

He nodded. It had seemed to him that the clinic was well defended, one reason he hadn't returned there after his encounter with Fiona, that and he hadn't wanted to discuss it with anyone who knew her. So much for that plan.

"Yes. She was turned. I'm familiar with her combat casting. It was the same." It had also seemed that there was a level of awareness, but what would be the point in saying it? They couldn't afford to hesitate in their kills, awareness or no. He couldn't dwell, and he didn't want Elissa dwelling either.

The awareness, if it was there, had not afforded Fiona the ability to control it. If she had been trapped inside her body, forced to witness her actions, if all of these walking dead were, was it not a mercy to take them down? He became aware he had such a tight clench of his weapons his knuckles were aching. He shook out some of the tension with a hard shrug of his shoulders.

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