Chapter 37: Confronting Flemeth
The mist clung to the Frostback foothills like a shroud, wet and cold, muffling the world to shades of gray and green. The path to Flemeth’s hut was a memory in Daylen’s mind, but walking it now felt like tracing the lines on a palm he’d outgrown. Alistair moved beside him, a mountain of quiet intent. His new armor, dark and severe, didn’t clank; it whispered. The massive flail hung from his belt, its presence a promise.
The hut emerged from the mist, a hump of weathered timber and sagging thatch. Smoke curled from the chimney, the scent of peat and drying elfroot sharp in the damp air. It looked harmless. A crone’s home.
They pushed the door open without knocking.
Flemeth sat by her fire, stirring a pot of something that smelled of iron and thyme. She didn’t look up. “Back so soon? And with a companion who walks… heavier than before. The weight of kingship, Alistair? Or something less tangible?”
“Just the weight of good steel,” Alistair said, his voice a low rumble. He didn’t move from the doorway, blocking the light.
Flemeth chuckled, finally setting her spoon down and turning. Her silver eyes flicked over Daylen, and the amusement in them flickered, just for an instant. Something colder, more assessing, took its place. “And you. Changed. The boy who feared his power is gone. What sits in his skin now, I wonder?” Her gaze shifted to Alistair, then back. “A dangerous pair you make. Trust can be a sharper blade than any. Especially when placed in… cunning hands.”
Daylen met her look. He said nothing. The old games, the veiled warnings about Morrigan, they were static now, the chirping of insects from a bank of fog he had already walked through. He saw the threads of manipulation, subtle and age-old, but they led to a smaller web than the one he now perceived hanging over all of Thedas.
His silence was more unnerving than any retort. Flemeth’s smile grew thin, strained at the edges. “No quips? No righteous declarations? You used to be more entertaining, child.”
“This isn’t about entertainment,” Daylen said, his first words flat and final.
Alistair remained silent, a statue of watchful potential. The only sound was the crackle of the fire.
Flemeth sighed, a sound of genuine, weary disappointment. “I see. The path is chosen, then. No grand revelations, no pleading for my wisdom.” She stood, her movements suddenly fluid, devoid of any pretense of age. “If this is how it must be, then let us do the familiar dance. Mother and daughter. Witch and hero. How many times has this tale been told?”
Daylen didn’t answer. He simply let go.
The air around him shivered. From nothingness, his armor coalesced—plates of starlight and shadow, formfitting and impossibly solid, etched with geometries that hurt the eye to follow. In his hand, Spirit Serpent appeared, the bone-white wood warm against his palm, its point aimed at the floor.
Flemeth’s eyes widened. True surprise, then. A flicker of something like hunger. “Ah,” she breathed. “That is different. You didn’t just find your power, boy. You found the door. You walked the Path.” Her form began to blur, to swell at the edges. “I felt a shift in the fabric. A stone dropped in a pond I thought had long gone dry.” Her voice deepened, distorting. “Let us see what the stone has wrought.”
The transformation wasn’t a slow morphing. It was an eruption. Wood splintered as the hut exploded outward, thatch and timber blasted into the mist as a shape of scale, sinew, and towering malice replaced the old woman. Flemeth, in her true draconic form, shook the remnants of her home from her crest, her roar a physical force that tore the mist apart and rattled the teeth in Daylen’s skull.
She was colossal, a fortress of crimson scale and whipcord muscle. Her eyes burned with ancient, intelligent malice.
“Front!” Daylen snapped, not shouting, the word a clear signal in the roaring aftermath.
Alistair was already moving. He didn’t charge; he flowed. The flail was in his hands, its chain a dead whisper before it became a shriek. He closed the distance with terrifying speed, a human-shaped projectile. The first swing wasn’t at her armored flank, but a brutal, upward arc aimed at the softer underside of her jaw.
CRACK.
The sound was like a mountain breaking. Flemeth’s head snapped back, a scale splintering. She bellowed, more in outrage than pain, and retaliated with a swipe of a claw the size of a cart. Alistair wasn’t there. He’d already pivoted, using the momentum of his own swing to slide under the blow, coming up on her other side to hammer the flail into the sensitive membrane of her nostril.
Daylen was a streak of emerald and shadow. While Alistair became her world, a buzzing, devastating distraction, Daylen went for the foundation. He phased, appearing behind her massive hind leg. His spear lanced out, not to pierce the thick scale, but to slash with surgical precision at the complex tapestry of tendons above the heel. The edge, honed on concepts sharper than steel, bit deep. Flemeth shrieked, her leg buckling momentarily.
She was dangerous. Terribly so. Her tail, a spiked log of muscle, lashed out with whip-crack speed. Daylen saw it in the shift of her haunches a fraction before it moved, phasing away as the tail pulverized the ground where he’d stood. Her hind leg, wounded but still powerful, kicked out in a spray of soil and rock. He weaved through the debris cloud, a ghost, striking again at the other leg.
Alistair was a masterpiece of violent defense. He danced in the kill-zone before her head, his shield a blur, deflecting snaps of teeth that could have sheared through a keep’s gate. Each deflection was followed by a punishing counter—a flail shot to an eye ridge, a shield bash to the tip of her nose. He was bleeding from a shallow gash on his temple where a glancing claw had caught him, but his rhythm never broke. He was her headache given solid, punishing form.
Flemeth, frustrated, enraged, did something unpredictable. As Daylen phased in for another dash at her tendons, she ignored Alistair’s latest blow to her brow and whipped her head sideways with viper speed. Not to bite, but to engulf.
Daylen rematerialized inside a cavern of hot, reeking darkness. Rows of dagger-teeth framed him above and below. The immense muscles of her jaws began to close.
There was no time to phase. He planted his feet on the wet, spongy floor of her mouth, braced the butt of Spirit Serpent against it, and drove the spear point upwards, towards the roof of her maw.
The spear punched through flesh and impaled her tongue, pinning it to the palate.
A guttural, choked roar vibrated through him, a sound of pure agony. The bite stalled. Using the spear as a pole, he vaulted up, feet pushing off a fang as big as his leg, and shot out of the closing gap as she writhed in pain.
The spear vanished from her mouth and reappeared in his grip, slick with dark blood.
Seeing her moment of vulnerability, Alistair made his move. As Flemeth tossed her head back in a pained roar, he sprinted up the incline of her thrashing neck, using the rough scales as handholds. He mounted the base of her skull like a rider, his legs locking around the column of muscle.
Daylen didn’t need a signal. He backpedaled, gathering space. Then he ran forward, his enhanced muscles coiling and unleashing. He launched himself fifteen feet into the air, a vertical ascent that hung him for a moment against the gray sky.
Flemeth saw him, her one good eye rolling. She began to twist.
Alistair, from his perch, wound the flail chain around his armored fist once, twice, a terrible finality in the motion.
Daylen threw the spear. It wasn’t an arc; it was a line of green-white light. It struck the dragon at the hinge of its jaw, pierced through, and hammered deep into the rocky earth beneath, nailing her head down.
Flemeth’s struggle became a pinned convulsion.
Alistair brought the flail down. It was not a swing. It was an execution. Every ounce of timeless strength, every death-learned lesson, focused into one terminal impact.
The spiked head connected with the crown of her skull.
The sound was not a crack, but a deep, wet crunch, a mortar hitting mud. The mighty body shuddered once, a wave from nose to tail-tip, and then went limp. The ancient light in her eyes guttered and died.
Silence, broken only by the drip of blood and the slow sigh of settling mist.
Daylen landed softly. Alistair dropped from the neck, his boots hitting the ground with a soft thud. They stood over the colossal corpse, steam rising from its wounds into the cold air.
No words. They looked at each other across the dragon’s massive head. A slow, single nod passed between them. The understanding was absolute.
They turned their backs on the remains and walked into the shattered husk of the hut. Amidst the splinters and crushed pottery, a few items remained untouched on a stone shelf: a weathered grimoire, a small carved mirror, a vial of something that glowed with its own soft light. Morrigan’s requested things. Daylen gathered them without ceremony.
Together, they walked back into the mist, leaving the body of the Witch of the Wilds to the creeping cold of the mountains. The first necessary death was done.
The next awaited.