Chapter 28: Blood Before the Oath
The dank, oppressive air of the Tower of Ishal still clung to Kerr’s lungs, a phantom weight, as they slipped into the Kocari Wilds at first light. It was a different world from the structured stone and ordered campfires of Ostagar. Here, everything was a moist, decaying crescendo. The trees twisted into arthritic claws, their leaves slick and dark like oil. The ground was a spongy mattress of moss and rot, releasing a sweet, sickly odor with every step that mingled with the sharper scent of pine and wet rock.
“Cheerful place,” Alistair muttered, his shield arm held tight to his body. His eyes never stopped moving, scanning the grey-green shadows between the trunks. “Really feels like home. If your home was actively trying to digest you.”
Kerr said nothing. His own senses, honed by years hunting in the Coastlands forests, were stretched to a wire. The normal sounds were there—the drip of water, the rustle of small creatures in the underbrush—but beneath it all was a profound, watchful silence that felt predatory. His longbow was in his hand, an arrow lightly nocked. He moved with a predator’s grace that belied his size, his boots finding silent purchase on fallen logs and clear patches of stone.
Duncan led them, a grey ghost in the murk. “The treaties are secured in a Warden cache near the old river road. The darkspawn blood… we will find that along the way. They are drawn to places of tainted magic, and there is an old templar outpost nearby, long since corrupted.”
They hadn’t gone half a mile when the first threat emerged. Not darkspawn, but a wolf, its ribs showing through a mangy pelt, eyes glowing with a sickly green hunger. It was tainted. Kerr didn’t hesitate. The draw of the bow was a smooth, practiced motion. The release was a sharp exhalation. The arrow took the beast in the throat, a clean, silencing shot. It crumpled without a sound.
“Nice,” Alistair said, a low whistle of appreciation. “You always that quiet with a bow?”
“Only when I don’t want to announce where we are,” Kerr replied, retrieving his arrow with a wet schluck. The blood was black and oily. He wiped the arrowhead on the moss, his face a mask of disgust.
The deeper they went, the more the forest felt like a clenched fist. The signs of darkspawn became undeniable: crude symbols smeared in ashy paste on the trees, the ground churned by clawed feet, a stench like open graves and burnt hair that cut through the forest damp.
They found the templar outpost, or what was left of it. It was less a building and more a skeletal ruin being swallowed by vines and fungus. The stone was stained with dark, weeping lichen. And there were shrieks.
Three genlocks erupted from a collapsed doorway, their slab-mouthed faces twisted in mindless rage. They moved with a jerky, unsettling speed.
“Contact!” Alistair barked, his shield coming up with a metallic ring as a rusted axe slammed into it.
Kerr’s bow was useless at this range. He slung it over his shoulder in one fluid motion and drew his longsword. The first genlock lunged. Kerr didn’t parry; he stepped into the charge, his greater height and mass a sudden, overwhelming force. He brought his heavy, spiked shield down in a brutal arc, not to block, but to crush. The iron rim met the creature’s skull with a sound like a hammer on a melon. It dropped.
He pivoted, his sword lashing out in a wide, controlled arc. It sheared through a genlock’s arm at the elbow. Black blood sprayed. The thing stumbled, and Alistair was there, his own sword finishing it with a precise thrust through the neck.
The last one came at Kerr from the side. He caught its dagger on his blade, locked it, and shoved forward, using his sheer strength to drive the creature back, off-balance. A sharp kick to its knee buckled the leg. Kerr ended it with a downward chop that split the collarbone and deep into the chest.
The sudden silence was louder than the fight. Both men stood back-to-back, breathing hard, scanning the ruins.
“You fight like a berserker with a chess master’s planning,” Alistair said, wiping his blade on a clean patch of moss. “That shield bash wasn’t in any chantry manual.”
“Highever training focuses on ending fights,” Kerr grunted, kneeling beside one of the fallen creatures. He pulled a small, glass vial from his belt pouch. “Not looking pretty while you do it.” Using the tip of his dagger, he coaxed the thick, tarry blood from a wound into the vial, his nose wrinkling. The substance seemed to absorb the weak light. “One.”
They found two more vials’ worth in a corrupted pool at the center of the ruin, the water iridescent with a film of evil. Kerr filled the containers carefully, his hands steady despite the corrosive smell burning his nostrils.
With the blood secured, Duncan led them north, towards a rocky outcrop that overlooked a dead stream. The cache was cleverly hidden: a seeming natural fissure in the rock that, when a specific stone was pressed, revealed a hollow space behind. Inside, wrapped in oiled leather and smelling faintly of elfroot and age, was a single, heavy scroll case.
Duncan unrolled the parchment slightly, just enough to see the intricate seals of Ferelden, Orlais, the Free Marches, and the Dwarven Empire. A flicker of something like relief passed over his stoic features. “It is here. This is our authority.”
As the scroll was re-secured, a voice, smooth as raven’s feathers and cold as the deep shadows, spoke from behind them.
“How very dramatic. Skulking in the woods, playing with foul blood and old paper.”
They turned as one. A woman stood there, as if she had coalesced from the mist itself. She was tall, willow-thin, wrapped in dark feathers and black cloth. Her pale hair framed a sharp, beautiful face with eyes of piercing gold. A great black staff was clutched in her hand.
Alistair’s sword was half out of its scabbard before Duncan stilled him with a raised hand. “Morrigan.”
“Warden-Commander,” she said, her tone implying the title was a mild curiosity. “Flemeth said you would come. That your order would be desperate enough to scrape its treasures from the mud.” Her gaze slid over Alistair, dismissive, and settled on Kerr. It was an appraisal, deep and unnerving. “And you bring a new pup. One who walks like a lord and kills like a gutter thug. An interesting combination.”
Kerr met her gaze, refusing to flinch. “I find versatility keeps you alive.”
A smirk touched her lips. “Indeed. My mother sends a message. She bids you take your treaties and your poisoned blood and do what you must at Ostagar. The currents of fate are swirling there, and your part in them is nearly due.” Her eyes lingered on the scroll case in Duncan’s hand. “She also wishes you to know that promises, once made to Wardens, have a way of coming due. Even ancient ones.”
With that cryptic statement, she took a step back into the thicker gloom. “Try not to die before the main event. It would be… anticlimactic.”
And she was gone, melting into the forest as silently as she had appeared.
The three Wardens stood in a heavy silence.
“Well,” Alistair breathed out. “She’s… friendly.”
“Flemeth’s daughter,” Duncan said, his voice low. “A power in her own right. Her messages are never just messages. They are omens.” He secured the scroll case to his belt. “We have what we came for. Now, we return. The Joining cannot wait.”
The walk back felt faster, the forest somehow less pressing with the physical weight of their objectives secured. But a new weight had settled on Kerr. The vials of blood sloshed against his thigh with every step. The scroll in Duncan’s possession was a symbol of a duty that stretched back centuries. And Morrigan’s words hung in the air, a cold fog of prophecy around them.
He had the tools now. The blood, the treaty, the resolve. The next step was the cup, the ritual, the descent into the dark beneath the tower. The memory of the genlock’s black blood coating his hands seemed to seep into his skin. He flexed his fingers, feeling the phantom slick of it.
Alistair fell into step beside him as the broken silhouette of Ostagar’s towers appeared through the trees. “You ready for this?” he asked quietly, no jest in his tone now.
Kerr looked at his hands, then towards the Tower of Ishal, a stark blade against the dying afternoon light. “No,” he said, the truth simple and stark. “But it’s the only path forward.”
They walked the last stretch in silence, the camp’s noises slowly rising to meet them—the clang of hammers, the distant shout of drills. Normal sounds. Kerr clutched the vial of darkspawn blood tighter, the glass cold against his palm. The normal world was behind him. Ahead lay only the dark, and the drink.