exsiliumlogs | [PLOT] That's no ordinary rabbit

"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.

"Oh, my friend," she said, looking over at him. "You're no Fereldan. You don't know our hounds so well." But it was a jest clearly made in the face of grim circumstances as they walked, one she didn't linger on for very long. She couldn't even manage a smile.

Her steps slowed but did not stop, even as he told her about Fiona. She couldn't begin to imagine it, fighting such a close friend and having to kill them. She could only assume he did so; Duncan would never let someone else kill a friend, even one trying to hurt him. It made her heart ache for him, though she didn't dare draw attention to what he may be feeling. There would be time for that later, after the battle was over.

But her thoughts went back to Alistair and Cailan, that they might be caught in all of this, and that they might turn into one of those... Her pace quickened. "Let's just make certain we don't lose anyone else today."

"A fact never lost on me," he said in kind. It mattered little that his father was Fereldan. He had him for such a short time. He was Orlesian street rat through and through. Perhaps he had moved up in the world and had enough polish that it rarely showed. It didn't mean he had ever felt truly at home in dog country, no matter how long he stayed there.

"Yes," he agreed. It was a driving imperative that finding her had only assuaged somewhat. The others were also important to him, their safety more of a priority now that his largest priority was obsolete. Unless darkspawn showed up here, many things would remain shifted for him.

He kept up with her pace, all the while watching the shadows and the potential ambush sites. It was going to be a long night.

She wasn't the praying sort these days, but Elissa offered up a silent prayer to the Maker that if they found the others, they wouldn't be in a similar condition.

The streets were mostly quiet, eerily so, until they broke away from the town proper on their way to the Hold. She stopped as she caught sight of a small group, moving to press herself against the wall of one of the buildings at the exit. They didn't notice at first, their attention diverted. She began to recognize some of the people as townsfolk who inhabited a few of the businesses and shops. One was even the owner of the cafe she and Anders liked. She winced softly, watching their movements. A quick glance told her that they had no further destination...but she could see others along the path leading to the Hold. It would be a difficult fight indeed.

She turned to Duncan with her frown. "Ready?"

He didn't like the quiet. It reminded him of the Deep Roads. Every sense was on heightened alert. He caught himself looking up several times, as though another of the animals would come at them any moment. Fighting was preferable to the unnerving calm before the storm.

He took cover at the same time that she did against the opposite wall. It gave them a better overall view and kept them out of one another's way if things got ugly. He nodded at her question, giving a silent signal that he'd be going right.

Without a sound, he slipped from the shadows, prepared for a tough go.

She waited for him to move first before she did, springing out from her hiding spot and making a beeline for the left. There were too many clustered around for this to be a stealth kill but the first ones could go as silently as possible, as close as she dared to get near them. One close swipe of her sword beheaded her first kill, and the second was grabbed from behind, throat being slit just as easily. When it fell, she took her second blade and impaled it through the forehead, the slippery squelch of the blade in flesh making her wince.

But even those two were enough to get the attentions of the rest of the group, who turned to her. One lunged, much faster than the others, and went straight down for her legs. Elissa sprang back and narrowly missed its hands, but both of her blades sank down into the undead's shoulders, sticking it to the ground until she could remove them.

Duncan spread his arms and slammed into two at once, forcing them forward into a small knot. As they stumbled on one another and tripped, his blades were a blur of slicing, the silverite cutting into flesh and bone alike. It was more important to immobilize them than get a clean kill immediately. He left behind several from his first charge writhing but unable to stand.

As more closed in, he used his weight and armor as much to his advantage as his speed, silently thankful that no matter what might have been going on somewhere in their heads, they acted slow and stupid. He would never have been able to use such tactics on darkspawn and survived. He slammed into them, kicking and jumping, breaking jaws with his cowters and ribs with his pauldrons and sabotons.

Whenever he became too closely pressed, he retreated among the dead and crippled to trip up his pursuers and take out those he had skipped over the first time. Although every now and then he glanced to make sure Elissa was still up, he was too surrounded to divert his attention more fully.

Elissa was glad that most of them were slow, reaction times limited as they moved. It was easier to fight back, though, like Duncan, she ran the risk of being overtaken now and again when too many closed in at once. She spun in a practiced arc, blades flashing, injuring - if not incapacitating - any creature that came too close. It was killing them that was more difficult, requiring more precise means of dealing blows.

Her blades were long enough to do more effective damage until she was nearly overwhelmed, but the flicker of flames along her sword could at least burn some of them as they reached for her. Not even the pain seemed to register across their glassy expressions; they kept coming even if she had set fire to their clothing.

Glances were given to Duncan sparingly, though she could hear his voice over the din of the muted gurgles and faint groans from their foes. Unless he shouted, she would assume he was all right, though she tried to keep him within her line of sight at all times. It only got her into trouble when one managed to grasp her shoulders, fingers scrabbling at her armor. With a twist of her hand, she stabbed back and into its face, thrusting up and into its brain. Withdrawing, blood and ichor dribbled onto her shoulder and she turned her head at the smell, coughing into her elbow. She whipped around and finished the job, beheading it too.

"There are too many of them!" he called to her over the din. "We need to cut our swath and fortify in the building. They're attracted to our movement!" No matter how many they cut down, more from the periphery of the battle came to join it. Sooner or later, they'd be too worn down adequately to defend themselves. They were too much in the open.

To make good on the idea, he made his way closer to her. They could more easily clear a path together than spread apart. "We can warn others via the devices that it's not safe over here," he said, breathless from being winded.

"If we can get that far!" she called back. If they continued to press and dog their steps, they might as well be leading more trouble into the Hold itself. But there were so many outside of it; if they were trying to go to the building, they would already have done so. Something was keeping them there, ensuring that anyone who passed was ripped apart. A clearer picture of what may have been happening was forming in her mind but nothing concrete, her attention constantly diverted when another got too close and she needed to strike it down.

She turned her head to him and nodded. "All right. Let's go now, while we can." If they waited too long, they would risk simply getting pinned where they were until someone else came along. "I don't suppose you have any traps on you," she inquired, reaching into her belt.

"We'll get there," he said grimly. It might wind up being by the skin of their teeth, but they'd do it. He was determined, and both were capable.

"Caltrops, which will be useless against them." Pain didn't slow or stop them. "And some smoke bombs. That will work to our favor." If they obscured their movement, they could make it further without being hounded by those drawn to motion. He hadn't used them up to this point because they were trying to keep sight of one another at a greater distance.

He reached into a belt pouch to take one of those up now.

They had to. She wasn't going to stop until they managed to kill her, if they could.

"I don't understand how they don't even seem to feel it," she muttered, a thought she wasn't keen on dwelling on for the moment. They had more pressing matters to attend to. She pulled out a small flask and checked it briefly, sniffing its contents. "I have a sticky trap. Probably won't do much besides slow them down while we keep moving." She didn't have enough to really do some damage, sadly, as she hadn't thought to bring more and there was no time to make any on the fly.

Elissa stepped forward to guard him as he worked, stepping forward only once to stab her blade into one's chest. She kicked the sword free and sent the creature tumbling into its fellows, slowing two others down.

"Think of it. The undead at home are no different. They keep coming until you hack them to pieces. They know no pain, no fear, only hunger for life." He glanced at the bottle and nodded grimly. "Save it for if we get overwhelmed."

He gave a quick look around and decided the first smoke bomb ought to go right ahead of them. "Be ready to run forward," he said. He only had three, not enough fully to cover the distance they needed to go. At least the wind wasn't blowing. He threw it hard and it burst, immediately releasing a billowing cloud of smoke that thickened by the moment. He waited for Elissa to take the lead, bringing up the rear to cover their flank.

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