"On the left!" Damon screamed.
Two Inquisition soldiers braced their shields against the approach of a rage demon, nevertheless shrieking as its flames nearly cooked them inside their armor. Damon's teeth bared as waves of frost layered around each other in the palm of his hand, rapidly wrapping over and over until a razor-sharp spike solidified. Then he snapped his hand toward the demon and struck it right in the neck. The rage demon howled and gurgled as it tried to claw out the spike.
The two soldiers recovered in time to finish it off.
Damon kept his eyes sweeping over the battlefield, spotting Cullen's formation amidst a cluster of lesser demons pounding their shield wall with jagged claws. They were holding just fine, preparing to hurl bombs over the barrier to cut off the demons' reinforcements. So he turned his attention elsewhere, to Iron Bull's mercenaries, busy as they were harassing the enemy's flanks.
Corypheus' cultists had baited one of the Inquisition's supply scouts into a narrow mountain pass with heavy deposits of raw veridium. Once they deployed an excavation team to mine out the vein, the ambush was sprung. Half the expedition's guards had been killed before word even got back to camp, and the other half perished as reinforcements arrived.
Which was when the second trap was sprung.
A second wave of cultists and Fade rifts erupted at their back, trapping them inside the pass. Now they were surrounded, fighting on two fronts and holding—for the moment. He'd have more time to reflect after the battle, but as it stood, he chalked their steadfast progress up to the newly forged alliance. The last time Damon had seen Templars and mages working together without grudge or malice was the night the Circle Tower fell. And now...
A pair of mages set about healing troops while a phalanx of Templars held four rage demons at bay. A cluster of mages combined their magic in a devastating networked spell that tore a hunger demon in two. Two templars dueled an abomination and its cultist backup. As dire as the current situation seemed, it reminded him of that night in the best of ways.
"Inquisitor! Ogre!"
The scout who called it out flapped her arms in a panic, immediately drawing his attention to the horned monstrosity charging their right flank. The battle lines of cultists parted like water around rock as the ogre stampeded toward them on all fours, barreling through half a dozen Inquisition soldiers in the process. Damon grit his teeth and sprinted toward it, preparing a spell in his left hand while his right snatched up a pike from one of the fallen. The ground was rough and peppered with rocks, which gave plenty of friction for large feet. But it was also
raining
, and Damon had strength to spare.
Thus, he yelled and roared, waving the pike nice and high to get the creature's attention. Steam poured from its nostrils as it shifted and barreled full-tilt toward the Inquisitor.
"That's it," he muttered.
Damon waited, standing stock-still and preparing to angle the pike. He glanced down at the ground below—just enough dirt for the weapon's spiked pommel to dig into. Damon grinned and waited for it to get closer.
Just a little...more...
Then he smiled, all teeth, and cast the spell in his offhand. A thick sheet of smooth ice coated the twenty yards between them. The moment the ogre's massive feet touched that sheet, it lost all control of its direction or momentum. Damon stuck the pike in the ground, angling it up and forward, then dove out of the way of the now-panicking ogre as it slid shoulder-first into the long pike-head. The
crack
of splintering wood filled the air, followed shortly by a bellowing roar. Damon looked up from his prone position to see the ogre madly groping at the pike-head buried in its shoulder. Its clawed fingers only managed to further splinter the broken nub of wood sticking out of its skin.
Damon leapt to his feet and reached for his back, drawing a longsword already notched by today's battle. His palm swept over the blade as he stalked toward the fallen creature, sparks of electricity dancing across the metal. The prone ogre made a feral swipe at him when he got close. Damon snapped his hips back, dashing just out of its reach. It clawed at the ground with one arm, yanking itself toward him while the other took another swing. Damon stood his ground and turned his hips as he swung toward the arm, using a crouching motion to get himself out of the way and add additional power.
The shock of the impact almost dislocated his arm, but the answering roar that vibrated his body made him grin. The ogre's own momentum had driven his sword halfway through its forearm, just as planned. The shock of electricity coursing through its muscles stunned the creature, but that would only last a few seconds. So he intensified the enchantment on the blade, sending more and more lightning into the metal until its edge began to glow red-hot. The ogre shrieked and thrashed, trying to grab his legs with the other arm. But he'd caught its attacking arm near the top of its swing, at an angle the other one couldn't reach.
Damon grit his teeth as he kept pushing, grimacing at the stink of seared flesh. He answered its agonized roar with one of his own, pouring more of his magic into the blade until—
Shing!
The force and heat of the sword cleaved straight through the bone and everything beyond, severing the ogre's arm near the elbow. The blind rage and agony with which it began thrashing made him withdraw to catch his breath. Then he lured it back toward the ice and cackled malevolently as it tripped once again. The moment the ogre's face smashed into the icy ground, Damon leapt for its back and ran toward its head. His still-glowing sword was flipped to an underhanded grip and driven toward its skull like a stake with all his falling weight behind it.
The steel plunged in almost to the hilt, and the ogre fell still.
With the remaining heat on the blade's edge, it slipped free fairly easily. When Damon looked up, he saw the remains of the cultists starting to retreat. Their rearmost ranks fell to a hail of arrows from Cullen's archer line. The mages also gave them a parting volley. Another two dozen perished to fire and lightning. As much as Damon wanted to order a pursuit, he knew the Inquisition needed to lick its wounds and collect its dead. Besides, they could have more traps lying in wait.
Damon's heavy breath was only overshadowed by the increasing din of rain and the moans of the injured and dying. He made his way to the center of the group, to triage and heal what he could while he let Cullen take over their defenses. By the time they were on the move, they needed two whole wagons to carry out the dead.
...
The journey back to the fortress was long, somber, and
cold
. Damon's armor was completely soaked through when they got off the mountain, and there was still at least another hour of marching to go. By the time they got back home, the soldiers were already complaining of numb appendages. Some of them no doubt had frostbite. Some would fall sick within the day. All were better off than the dead.
Damon stabled his horse, left his sword to be fixed by the smithy, and made his way to the keep and a warm bath. If he spoke more than three words to anyone the whole time, he couldn't remember. His mind's only occupation was the
two whole wagons
of bloody, mangled corpses. They had defeated the ambush and saved the miners, but at terrible, terrible cost. And perhaps the worst part? It was no one's fault.
The ore vein
was
there. There was no ambush ready when they'd confirmed it. The scouts had done their job well. The workers had proper security who were excellently vigilant. Their lookout had ridden for reinforcements as soon as the attack came. Every single failsafe and protocol they had for this situation had played out exactly as intended, and it
worked
. And still the death toll numbered more than two score. A whole fifth of their expeditionary unit, gone.
And Damon still had ogre brains stuck to his hands.
The moment the thought hit, he shuddered and tore off his gauntlets, hurling them carelessly across the room. He heated the tub as hot as he could without boiling it, stripped off his armor and underclothes, and dunked himself into the scalding water. The pain pulled him away from his visceral disgust, so he reinforced it with coarse bristles, vainly trying to scrub away the bloodstains on his skin. The screams of the men and women he'd healed, some missing limbs, others trying to hold their guts in...
Damon's jaw clenched as he scrubbed harder, peeling away layers of skin until it was all raw.
"Damon!"
He flinched at the sound of Cassandra's voice. A moment later, her worried face appeared in the doorway of his washroom. He stared at her, clad as she was in her Seeker's tunic. She paled before his eyes, taking in the state of him. Wait. Was he injured? Had he just not noticed?
