Chapter 18: Symphony of Slaughter
The coalescence shuddered, its final shriek fading into a wet gurgle as Sten’s greatsword carved through its core. The mound of flesh deflated, sloughing into a foul-smelling slurry of ichor and dissolving matter.
Daylen let the stone armor crumble from his body in a cascade of gravel and dust. He took a deep breath, the air tasting of rot and ozone.
“Charming,” Morrigan said, peering at the dissipating sludge. “A crude attempt at existence.”
Wynne was already moving, her staff glowing as she passed it over Leliana, who had a shallow, weeping scratch on her forearm from a flailing pseudopod. The skin knitted together under the golden light. “The infection is purged. A scratch from such a thing can breed corruption.”
“My thanks,” Leliana said, flexing her arm.
Alistair kicked a fragment of broken barrel. “So, servant’s passage, laundry vents, library. Sounds simple. What could possibly go wrong?”
As if in answer, a new sound echoed down the left-hand tunnel—not whispers, but the distinct, heavy clank of plate armor. And ragged breathing. And a wet, guttural growl.
Daylen met Alistair’s eyes. “You just had to say it.”
“It’s a gift.”
They reformed, this time with a practiced fluidity. Daylen and Alistair moved to the front, Sten a half-step behind and to the right, a poised hammer. The three women fell in behind—Leliana with arrow nocked, Morrigan with fingers already tracing dark patterns in the air, Wynne with a shield spell shimmering at her fingertips.
The tunnel opened into a wider, vaulted chamber. Old laundry vats, giant and rusted, lined the walls. And between them, figures lurched into the dim light cast by phosphorescent fungi clinging to the ceiling.
They were Templars. Or had been. Their once-shining armor was now streaked with black veins, as if the metal itself were infected. Their helms were gone, revealing faces twisted by possession, eyes glowing with a sickly orange fire. Some held swords crackling with malignant energy. Others had hands warped into monstrous claws. Among them shambled more abominations—mages whose bodies had become nightmarish perversions of flesh and element, all lumbering towards the living, the fresh, the untainted.
“Maker, no,” Wynne breathed, her voice thick with grief. “Ser Carroll… Enchanter Murel…”
“They’re not them anymore,” Alistair said, his voice hard. He settled his shield firmly on his arm. “You know the drill. End their suffering.”
The first possessed Templar charged, its movements jerky but powerful. Daylen didn’t meet it head-on. He sidestepped, his silverite blade licking out to score a deep line across its unarmored thigh. As it stumbled, he chanted a single word. The air around the wound flash-froze, encasing the leg in a shell of rime. The creature roared, off-balance.
Sten was there. His greatsword fell in a devastating overhead arc, shearing through frozen flesh and bone with a sound like splitting timber. The thing collapsed.
Another Templar, this one with crackling energy wreathing its sword, raised its weapon. A bolt of dark lightning leapt towards Wynne.
Alistair slammed his shield down, not just blocking, but absorbing. A blue-white sigil flared on the face of his shield, and the hostile magic dissipated with a sound like a shattering wine glass. The Templar looked confused for a split second.
“My turn,” Alistair said, and bashed the thing full in the face with the edge of his shield. Bone crunched.
“Left flank!” Leliana called, her voice calm. An arrow thudded into the eye socket of an abomination weaving a fire spell, interrupting its casting. It clutched its face, howling.
Daylen saw the pattern, the press of bodies. They were being surrounded. “Morrigan, the one Leliana hit!” he shouted, his voice cutting through the din.
“With pleasure,” Morrigan purred. She extended a hand, fingers clawed. A pulsing, sickly-green aura enveloped the burning abomination. It shuddered, its fires guttering out as the spell took root inside it. A Walking Bomb.
Daylen turned, raised his free hand, and sketched a sigil on the damp stone floor between his backline and the advancing horde. It flared electric blue—a Glyph of Repulsion. The next two possessed Templars rushing forward hit the invisible barrier as if running into a castle wall. They stumbled back, dazed.
The infected abomination, its life force gutted by Morrigan’s spell, finally fell. And then it exploded. Not with fire, but with a vomitous geyser of toxic, polluted blood and viscera. The corruption showered over three more hostiles clustering nearby. They screamed as the fluid burned their flesh, their own movements becoming sluggish, diseased.
“Now, Sten!” Daylen yelled.
Sten grunted, heaving his sword in a wide, horizontal cleave that finished one of the poisoned Templars. Daylen ducked under a wild swing from a clawed abomination, his own blade moving in smooth, economic strokes. He parried a claw, sidestepped, and with a touch of his palm to its chest, cast a Petrify spell. The creature’s forward momentum carried it for one more step before it solidified into a statue of grey stone, a look of rage frozen on its face.
Alistair shoved a stumbling Templar into it. The stone statue shattered under the impact, collapsing into harmless gravel.
They moved as a single organism. Daylen’s magic wasn’t flamboyant; it was tactical. A Cone of Cold here to glaze the floor and send a group of enemies sprawling. A paralyzing glyph there to lock a dangerous spellcaster in place for Leliana’s arrows. He fought back-to-back with Alistair, whose shield was a mobile fortress, and Sten, whose sheer power turned every controlled enemy into shattered fragments. Alistair’s Templar training snapped out in bursts—a Silence to choke an abomination’s spell in its throat, a Cleanse to purge the creeping corruption from a wound on Sten’s shoulder.
They carved through the laundry room, a brutal, efficient machine. When the last corrupted Templar fell, its blackened armor clattering to the stone, a sudden, ringing silence descended, broken only by their heavy breathing.
From behind a giant, overturned vat, a small whimper sounded.
Daylen held up a fist. Everyone froze. He approached slowly, peering around the vat.
Huddled together were four people in simple apprentice robes—two young men, a woman, and a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen. They were trembling, their faces pale with terror.
“Please,” the older woman stammered, “don’t let the demons take us…”
Wynne pushed past Daylen, her face softening. “Child, it’s alright. Look at me. Do you know who I am?”
The girl nodded, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. “First Enchanter Wynne.”
“We are getting you out,” Wynne said, her voice firm. “Can you walk?”
They nodded, scrambling to their feet.
Daylen pointed back the way they’d come, through the tunnel where the coalescence had fallen. “That path is clear now. Go to the main hall on the first floor. If you see any… things, run. Do not stop. Tell any Templars you see that the Grey Wardens are clearing the tower. Do you understand?”
The apprentices nodded, a frantic hope replacing some of the fear in their eyes. They scurried past, giving the party a wide berth, and vanished into the passage.
Alistair watched them go, wiping his blade clean. “One room at a time, huh?”
“It’s all we can do,” Daylen said, his eyes already scanning the next doorway, a heavy iron-bound portal that led deeper into the Tower’s bowels. The path to the laundry vents, and hopefully upward, lay beyond. The silence from that darkness felt heavier, watchful. It was not the silence of emptiness. It was the silence of something waiting.
He tightened his grip on his sword. “Let’s keep moving.”
The iron-bound door groaned in protest as Sten put his shoulder into it. Beyond lay the laundry proper, a cavernous space choked with the ghosts of soap and mildew. Massive, still copper vats stood like dormant sentinels, and sagging lines of rotten rope crisscrossed the upper darkness.
Something heavy shifted in the shadows behind a towering shelf of cracked washing stones.
“Contact,” Leliana whispered, her bowstring already taut.
It unfolded itself from the gloom, a creature of grafted sinew and mismatched bone plates. It had the torso of a man, but its arms were elongated, ending in scythe-like blades of hardened keratin. Its head was a faceless dome, save for a vertical mouth that split open to release a chittering, insectoid scream. Two more emerged behind it, clicking and scraping across the flagstones.
“A pride demon’s handiwork,” Morrigan observed coolly. “Vain constructs. All show, no subtlety.”
Alistair adjusted his grip on his shield. “Yeah, well, the ‘show’ looks sharp. Any bright ideas?”
Daylen didn’t answer with words. He answered with heat. He raised his left hand, fingers contorting into a rigid claw, and pulled. The air in front of the lead horror rippled, then ignited. A roaring vortex of flame engulfed it, washing over its chitinous plates. It shrieked, a sound of pure agony, as its shell blackened and cracked.
Wynne’s staff tapped the ground. A wave of revitalizing energy swept through them, a cool balm that chased the fatigue from their muscles and sharpened their focus. Daylen felt the welcome surge, the magical stamina replenishing inside him.
The burning creature staggered forward, blind and furious. Sten met its charge not with a defensive stance, but with a forward lunge of his own. His greatsword wasn’t a tool for fencing; it was a force of nature. He didn’t swing at the creature. He swung through its space. The blade connected with a sickening crack, shearing through one bladed arm and carving deep into its torso, nearly bisecting it.
The second construct lunged at Leliana. She danced back, but its follow-up strike was faster, the bladed tip scoring a line of fire across her thigh. She gasped, stumbling.
A sphere of virulent, green energy struck the creature in the back. Morrigan’s infectious magic seeped into the seams of its bone armor, a creeping necrosis that instantly stiffened its joints and dulled its movements. It turned, sluggish.
Alistair saw the opening. He ducked under a clumsy swing, planted his feet, and drove forward like a battering ram. His shield slammed into the thing’s midsection, the impact augmented by his full momentum. Bones snapped. It fell onto its back, its limbs twitching under Morrigan’s weakening curse.
Daylen was already moving past them, toward the third horror. It raised its bladed arms high for a killing blow on the disoriented Leliana. He didn’t try a complex spell. He simply pointed his silverite blade and unleashed a focused beam of cold so intense the very air crystallized around it. The beam struck the creature’s raised joint, flash-freezing it solid.
The limb shattered when the creature tried to move it.
Leliana, seizing the moment, spun on her good leg. Her dagger flashed once, twice, in a silver arc, finding the soft, fleshy junction beneath the thing’s armored chin. It collapsed, gurgling.
Silence, again. The air stank of burnt chitin, ozone, and blood.
Wynne was immediately at Leliana’s side, her hands glowing over the bloody gash on the bard’s leg. The skin knitted together seamlessly. “Mind your footing, my dear.”
“I’ll aim for graceful and deadly next time,” Leliana replied, wincing as she tested her weight.
Alistair nudged the smoldering remains of the first construct with his boot. “Cheerful place. Really captures the whole ‘sterile academic environment’ the Circle brochures promised.”
Daylen scanned the far end of the laundry. A set of narrow, vertical rungs were bolted into the stone wall, leading up into a dark square of a vent shaft. “There. The vents.”
He approached first, sheathing his swords to climb. The rusty iron was cold and rough under his gloves. The shaft was tight, a square tunnel of mortared stone just wide enough for shoulders. He hauled himself up, the light from below growing fainter.
The climb was short but claustrophobic. He emerged into a narrow service corridor, dust motes dancing in the faint light filtering from grates above. One by one, the others followed.
Wynne was the last up. As she reached the top, a grating sound echoed from the far end of the corridor. A section of the wall, cunningly disguised as stone, slid sideways.
Four figures in Enchanter robes stood framed in the opening. They looked gaunt, terrified, but their staves were raised and glowing with defensive magics. At their center stood an older man, his beard untrimmed but his eyes burning with a fierce, unwavering light.
“First Enchanter Irving,” Wynne breathed, a wave of relief softening her features.
Irving’s gaze swept over the group, covered in gore and soot, and settled on Daylen. His eyes narrowed, then widened in recognition. “Amell? And… a Grey Warden? By the Maker’s mercy, you are a sight I feared I’d never see.”
Behind him, from the darkness of the library, came the sound of a child crying. Then another. Then a low, guttural growl that was distinctly not human.
Irving’s shoulder slumped, the brief hope vanishing under a crushing weight. “You’ve come for the children. Good. But I’m afraid the way to us… is presently occupied.” He stepped aside, revealing the chaos within the library annex. Bookshelves were overturned as barricades. Huddled among them were perhaps thirty apprentices and younger mages. And clawing at those barricades, slithering over piles of splintered wood and torn parchment, were three new horrors. One was a spindly thing of shadow and broken glass. Another pulsed with corrupted earth magic, stone and root fused into a lumbering form. The third was a twisted mockery of a desire demon, all promises and sharpened bone.
“We held them at the main stairs,” Irving said, his voice a hollow rasp. “But they found another way in.” He looked at Daylen, at the group behind him. His next words were simple, desperate. “We cannot hold much longer.”
Daylen’s eyes swept the annex, calculating routes and threats in a single breath. The barricades were failing, and the terror of the children was a tangible scent in the air. “Irving, take every survivor you have and get to the main hall on the first floor. The path behind us is clear, for now.”
The old First Enchanter stared, hope and despair warring in his tired face. “But the demons…”
“We will hold them here,” Daylen said, his voice leaving no room for argument. He turned to his team, seeing the grim understanding in their eyes. “Buy them time.”
Irving didn’t waste another moment. He turned, barking orders to his fellow enchanters. They began swiftly, urgently, shepherding the huddled apprentices toward the service corridor, the sound of sobs and frantic shuffling filling the space behind the growing cracks in the barricade.
The party reformed a solid line in front of the vent shaft exit. Leliana’s arrows found the joints of the shadow-and-glass horror, shattering its limbs with crystalline pings. Sten’s greatsword met the earthen abomination with a thunderous crash, sending chips of rock flying. Wynne’s barriers flickered over them, golden light flaring with each impact. They fought not to kill every demon, but to check their advance, a brutal delaying action.
The last apprentice disappeared down the shaft. The heavy stone door slid shut with a final thud.
Silence pooled back into the library annex, thick and sour. The three remaining demons lay in twitching, dissolving heaps. The only sounds were the ragged pull of breath and the soft drip of ichor from Alistair’s shield.
Then came the slow, mocking applause.
It echoed from the grand library entrance across the room, a doorway now framed by splintered oak and torn parchment. A figure stood there, leaning against the ruined frame as if watching a mildly amusing play. He wore the rich, red-Trimmed robes of a senior enchanter, but they were stained, the fabric dark in patches. His face was haggard, his eyes lit with a feverish, internal fire.
“Uldred,” Wynne spat, the name a curse.
“Dear Wynne,” the man said, pushing off the doorframe and stepping into the light. “Still clinging to your tired morals while the world burns. And you brought… guests.” His gaze traveled over them, dismissive, until it landed on Daylen’s Grey Warden insignia. A hungry smile split his face. “A Warden. Here. How… fortuitous.”
“You did this,” Daylen stated, his hand resting on the pommel of his silverite blade. It wasn’t a question.
Uldred spread his stained hands in a gesture of mock innocence. “I liberated us. The Chantry, the Templars… they are cages of fear. I offered my colleagues a key.” He looked at the dissolving demons around them. “Some keys are… sharper than others.”
“Blood magic,” Morrigan said, her voice cool with academic detachment. “A crude tool for crude minds.”
“A tool that works!” Uldred snapped, the pleasant facade cracking. “You saw the state of things. We were lambs waiting for slaughter during a Blight. I ensured our survival. I ensured we would have power.”
Alistair shifted, his shield arm tensing. “By turning your own people into those… things? By murdering your friends?”
“Sacrifices,” Uldred hissed. “For a greater cause. Power requires payment. And I can offer you a share of it.” He took a step forward, his intensity a physical force. “The Blight is coming, Warden. You know this. You need allies with real strength, not crumbling towers and prayers.” He gestured to himself. “Join me. With my knowledge and your… unique talents, we could command this chaos. Rule it.”
Daylen felt a cold clarity settle over him. He looked at the blood on the floor, thought of the terrified children, remembered the twisted faces of the possessed Templars. “You’re offering a partnership built on the corpses of your Circle. On the suffering you caused.”
“During a Blight, power is the only currency that matters,” Uldred insisted, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
“No,” Daylen said, the word final and flat. “You have to die for what you’ve done.”
Wynne’s staff glowed brighter. Sten merely grunted, hefting his sword.
Uldred’s face contorted, the last vestige of humanity dissolving into pure, incandescent spite. “You arrogant child. You think your little Wardens’ quest matters? You have no idea what true power is! I didn’t just dabble in blood magic,” he snarled, his body beginning to tremble, the air around him warping. “I sought a patron who could grant it! I pledged myself to the one force even the Blight serves!”
Alistair’s eyes went wide with dawning horror. “The Archdemon.”
“And it answered!” Uldred screamed, his back arching violently.
His form began to bloat, robes tearing. Skin darkened to a bruised, purplish hide, stretching over erupting muscle and jagged bone spurs. His head distended, curving horns ripping from his brow as his mouth became a maw of jagged fangs. A massive, whip-like tail, spiked and muscular, sprouted from his base. Within seconds, the senior enchanter was gone, replaced by a hulking, seven-foot-tall Pride Demon. Its eyes burned with the same mad fire that had lit Uldred’s, but now they swam with a vast, cosmic arrogance.
“It will die,” Alistair said, his voice tight with fury as he settled into a fighting stance. “And so will you.”
The Pride Demon roared, a sound that shook dust from the crumbling ceiling. It lunged, not with finesse, but with overwhelming, hateful force.
Daylen didn’t retreat. He grounded himself and began to chant, the words guttural and sharp. He sheathed his steel blade. The silverite sword in his right hand flared with a cold, blue-white light. From his left palm, a second blade of pure, shimmering force coalesced, its edge humming with arcane energy.
Above his head, the air rippled. Five more blades of solidified magic snapped into existence, hovering in a deadly halo. They shone with a cold, surgical light, turning slowly like the teeth of a spectral saw. He was a storm given form.
The battle was a whirlwind of pain. The demon’s tail lashed out, catching Sten across the chest and sending him crashing into a bookshelf with a sound of cracking ribs. Alistair’s shield rang like a gong with every parried blow, his feet skidding backwards on the torn floor. Morrigan’s hexes sizzled against its thick hide, leaving smoking welts but little more. Leliana’s arrows seemed like thorns to a beast this size. Wynne’s barriers shattered one after another under the relentless assault, her face pale with strain.
Daylen moved through it all, his twin blades a blur. He wasn’t trying to pierce the demon’s thick armor. He darted in close, a tempting target, and when the massive clawed fist swept down to crush him, he rolled under it. His force-blade lashed out not at the fist, but at the back of the massive wrist, severing tendons with a sound like cut cable. The demon bellowed, its hand going limp.
He moved to its side as it stumbled, his silverite blade plunging deep into the joint behind its knee. He wrenched, and something thick and vital popped.
The demon roared again, swinging its horned head wildly. Daylen stood his ground. With a roar of his own, he thrust both hands forward. The five spectral blades above him shot forth like scattershot, punching into the demon’s body at precise points: two in the shoulders, two in the meat of its thighs, one deep into the base of its neck.
It wasn’t a killing blow. It was an anchor. The demon shuddered, its movements instantly hampered, slowed, pinned by the ethereal weapons protruding from its limbs.
“Now, Sten!” Daylen yelled, his voice raw.
The Qunari, bleeding but unbroken, surged to his feet. He dropped his greatsword, planted his feet, and cupped his massive hands. Alistair saw the plan instantly. He took three running steps, planted a boot in Sten’s waiting palms, and was launched upward with the Qunari’s raw, titanic strength.
He soared, a streak of silver and blue, over the faltering demon’s head. He twisted in the air, bringing his sword down in a two-handed grip. The blade, driven by all his weight and momentum, plunged deep into the spot where the demon’s neck met its broad shoulders. He felt the point grate on bone, then punch through into something vital.
Alistair landed hard on the other side, rolling to a stop. The Pride Demon stood frozen for a heartbeat, Uldred’s arrogant fire fading from its eyes, replaced by a depthless shock. Then, with a final, wet sigh, the colossal form toppled sideways, hitting the ground with an impact that shook the entire annex.
Silence, again. This one was complete.
Daylen let the magical blades wink out of existence. The force blade in his hand dissipated like mist. He leaned on his silverite sword, gasping for air, his body a single bruise. Around him, his friends were in similar states: Wynne slumped against a shelf, Alistair clutching his side, Sten bleeding freely from his chest, Leliana and Morrigan leaning on each other for support.
They had done it. The monster was dead.