Ithilian's sharp eye followed Amalia as she took off towards the skeletal archers, his bow training itself on those that began to fire in her direction. He had taken a pair of them down before he noticed a change in the arcane horror's movements. The shield surrounding it had lowered, and it was actively following the Qunari with its gaze. Perhaps all of the corpses in the area were finally raised and on the offensive. Ithilian hoped so, since there were perhaps twenty or more standing in the room they were in.
Strongly desiring to kill the arcane horror moreso than any of the others, Ithilian turned his next arrow on it, sending it into the mage's skull with a thwack of piercing bone, but the attack did not take down the creature as it did the others. The Dalish growled. Perhaps they'd have to hack this thing to bits to put it back to sleep. That was fine by him. He had hardly finished the thought, however, when the former magister summoned forth a spell directed at Ithilian. A ball of energy grew in power just behind him, and Ithilian felt himself immediately being pulled towards it as though gravity had simply changed its natural course. He struggled against it, gripping the corners of stones in the floor to get better leverage, and forcefully pulling himself away.
Too soon, however, the spell exploded behind him, a forceful blast sending him flying to the side, his bow slipping from his grasp as he skidded along the floor a short ways. He'd put enough distance between himself and the spell to significantly lessen the damage, and as such, it was really only his pride that was injured by being tossed about by the mockery of a magister. The corpses descended on him before he could even rise to his feet, hacking down at him with ancient weaponry. He barely drew his knives in time to parry, before rolling away and scrambling to his feet, hacking the head clean off the corpse before him. He ducked under an incoming arrow, slashed an arm off another attacker, moving swiftly to ensure he was not surrounded. The arcane horror seemed content to let its minions deal with the elf, as no further spells came his way. He could only assume it had turned its attention on Amalia, or reentered the shield that had protected it.
Amalia wasn't in much of a position to do anything about the Arcane Horror aiming for Ithilian, as she still had three more skeletons to deal with at the time. Still, even as she parried an incoming swing with her poniard, using her other hand to grab the empty ribcage of the skeleton and yank it forward to break its lower spine over her knee, she registered the sound of a much more substantial body colliding with stone, and the clatter of wood as he presumably lost hold of his bow. Her lips compressed into a thin line, small but obvious evidence of displeasure, even as she caught the telltale dull roar of flames being conjured to life. The former magister was doubtless aiming for her now, and she needed to think fast. The Qunari's odd eyes flicked quickly over her two remaining menaces, and she grabbed the nearest one, earning herself a stab wound to the side in the process when a longsword sliced through her thin armor and into the right half of her abdomen.
Nevertheless, she pivoted, forcing the corpse to come along as she swung about in a half-circle, and as soon as the fireball hit the creature, she stabbed backwards with her knife, wrenching upwards to gut what flesh remained on the last of them. Ithilian, she could tell, was mobbed by many of the others, but they were slow and he was not. Of greater danger was the thing being allowed to throw spells about with impunity, and she was halfway to invisible, tucking her knife-handle between her teeth and drawing her chain, when it teleported, reappearing with a resounding noise perhaps three feet from her person. The disorienting spell it fired off caused her to stagger, unable to slip into stealth, and she was completely visible and at its mercy.
The ice that crawled its way up her left foot was some clue as to what was going on, and thankfully enough the biting chill was all she needed to regain her senses, and Amalia tugged, trying to free herself. The frost cracked, but did not give, and she was forced to the conclusion that unless she disrupted it, the problem would only grow worse. Her first chain toss went slightly wide when her side twinged in painful protest of the motion, still bleeding freely, though not particularly copiously. It would have to be ignored. The ice was up to her knee by the time she threw again, but this time she was much more sucessful, managing to wrap the length of linked chain several times about the Arcane Horror and pinning its arms to its sides. Its motion was now, more or less, hers to control. A precise toss of her knife embedded the weapon in the thing's other eye socket, but the arrow sticking out of the first had been enough to inform her that this alone would not be sufficient.
The corpses of the elven workers could not be simply ignored, even if Amalia had her hands entirely full with the magister, and so Ithilian steeled himself, going to work. "Souver'inan isala hamin," he spoke to the corpses as he tore into them, twin blades a flurry as he dodged, parried, countered, hacked limb from limb without hesitation. "Na melana sahlin." If there was any kind of release to be given to them from this, then he would see it done. At the very least, this demon had made a mockery of their deaths, and what was wrong needed to be put right.
His purpose clear, he blocked out the rest of the room, perhaps the rest of the world, as he tore the unwilling skeletal warriors to bits. If they wounded him, he did not feel it, or did not care. In short time, the last in the immediate area fell, Ithilian breathing heavily, but steadily. Given some room to breathe and work, the Dalish quickly went to retrieve his bow, seeing as the Qunari had gained some amount of control over the arcane horror. He quickly fired off a few arrows, each hitting the creature in a different area, and it struggled viciously against the chain restraining it.
A snarl forming on his lips, Ithilian drew steadily closer, walking towards the arcane horror, loosing arrows into it all the while. It was clearly weakening, and once both of its enemies were in range, electricity bristled from its fingertips, and even with its hands at its sides, it was able to cast the chain lightning spell, directing it at Ithilian. Spells were not an easy thing to dodge, and so Ithilian soon found himself roaring in pain and momentarily stunned as lightning coursed through his body, sending him to a knee before it arced away towards Amalia. Thoroughly annoyed at this point, Ithilian drew both his blades, intent on closing the distance. He wanted to see if this damn thing could keep casting spells without a head.
When the chain lightning rebounded towards her, Amalia had the sudden thought that ancient Tevinter must have been sorely lacking in scientific knowledge. "This is going to hurt you just as much as it hurts me," she murmured dryly, not even attempting to dodge the incoming bolt.
A Qunari scientist had once conducted an experiment involving lightning and metal. She imagined that it must have been much less painful, though perhaps no more informative, than this was about to be. Clamping her jaw shut so as not to bite her tongue off, Amalia tightened her grip on her chain and waited. It was... about as excruciating as she was expecting, give or take a few pins and needles. As it was, she was mercifully spared from the indignity of a very feminine scream by the fact that she was rather prepared for the endeavor. Not so for the former magister, and even as the energy from the bolt traveled from her body up her unconventional weaponry, leaving her numb and her skin tingling uncomfortably, she watched what must have passed for its musculature seize up, locking it in place as it was hit with its own spell.
She was not so foolish, and dropped the chain immediately, just in case.
The magister's spell had rebounded against it, and Ithilian would make certain to take advantage of the opening. He bolted forward, flipped his blades around backwards in his hands, and threw himself into the air upon reaching the creature, the same move he had used against the abomination the other day, but this time it was much more effective. The arcane horror released a shriek as the Dalish's weapons plunged into its chest, and it went down, chains still wrapped around its body. Even still, it thrashed against him, trying to muster up the mana for another spell.
Snarling, Ithilian ripped his right blade free from the chest, plunging it down just above the bridge of the creature's nose, the blade tearing through the skull between where the eybrows had been, to burst out the back end of the head, only stopping when the point of the blade was stopped by the stone of the ground. Still the thing struggled, refusing to die.
The elf was more or less lost to rage at this point, pulling the left blade free and plunging down through the chest several more times. "Ar... tu... na'din!" He shouted at it, the final word accompanying a horizontal slice across the neck, taking the arcane horror's head clean off, leaving it speared and stuck on Ithilian's other sword, and forcing the body to finally stop moving beneath him. Well, that answered that question. Indeed, the magister could not cast spells without a head.
He was still for a moment, breathing heavily, staring down at the arcane horror with his one remaining eye, at the severed head that still remained upon his blade. It was certainly no justice for those that had died here, and hardly what one could call vengeance, but perhaps he had given them some measure of peace. It would have to do. He stood slowly, looking about for any further threats, but the horror seemed to have been the source of them. Amalia seemed well enough, though there was the matter of the bleeding wound she had sustained, but Ithilian suspected she would be fine. He was done underestimating her. Instead, he moved back to the pile of bodies he had created, the corpses of the elven slaves. He gripped the head of the magister with a powerful hand, wrenching it free from the blade, and tossing it at their feet, before crouching down at their feet and speaking quietly.
"Vir sulahn'nehn. Vir dirthera. Vir samahl la numin. Vir lath sa'vunin. In uthenera na revas."
Amalia didn't need to speak Elvish to understand the general direction this one-sided conversation was taking. She couldn't say she shared the sentiment, particularly, mostly becuase she didn't make it her business to deal in sentiment at all, but she also didn't feel the need to be rude about it. So instead, she made herself useful, checking over her wound with a clinical eye. The first few layers of skin were sliced relatively cleanly, though she would not discount infection as a possibility given the amount of time these weapons must have been down here. It certainly didn't give off the impression of sterility, if indeed the ancients had actually known what that was in the first place. Somehow, she doubted it. The cut was about five inches long, and bleeding, though not profusely.
After a minor internal debate, Amalia shrugged and withdrew a vial from one of the pouches at her belt. Pulling out the stopper with her teeth, she downed the red concoction inside in one swallow, replacing the glass in a different compartment. It smarted rather badly, all things considered, but it was certainly better than the mix of yellowish pus and blood she'd be dealing with if the wound was left on its own and did take on too much dirt.
Waiting until she was fairly sure Ithilian was done speaking to corpses, the Qunari cocked her head to the side and spoke. "Injured?" She didn't have too many potions on her at present, but there was certainly one to be spared if he happened to need it. They did no good just sitting there, after all.
Ithilian didn't know what Qunari did with their dead, but he was glad at least that she hadn't interrupted him. Satisfied as he was going to get, the Dalish rose smoothly, sliding his blades back into their sheaths, his face rather devoid of any emotion, which was perhaps an improvement from the typical glare or frown or snarl of annoyance or hatred. "I'm fine," he responded to Amalia. The skeletons hadn't done anything major to him, and though the chain lightning spell was causing the muscles in his back to occasionally twinge in pain, there was little to be done about that but wait for it to pass. Amalia, as he expected, was fine, and the only remaining threat was this fugitive, who Ithilian couldn't imagine was more dangerous than the arcane horror, a pride demon possessing the deceased form of a magistrate.
"Let's be done with this," he suggested, moving onwards. Though the horror had made this room its home, the door was open to them to explore further. Perhaps the creature had simply been drawn to this place for the weakness in the Veil here, and refused to venture elsewhere. Or perhaps the fugitive had somehow controlled it or made a deal with it, and arranged for it to wait here for them. Either way, Ithilian suspected they weren't quite done yet, and he drew his bow, nocking an arrow in it as the pair ventured further into the ruins of the mine.
Strongly desiring to kill the arcane horror moreso than any of the others, Ithilian turned his next arrow on it, sending it into the mage's skull with a thwack of piercing bone, but the attack did not take down the creature as it did the others. The Dalish growled. Perhaps they'd have to hack this thing to bits to put it back to sleep. That was fine by him. He had hardly finished the thought, however, when the former magister summoned forth a spell directed at Ithilian. A ball of energy grew in power just behind him, and Ithilian felt himself immediately being pulled towards it as though gravity had simply changed its natural course. He struggled against it, gripping the corners of stones in the floor to get better leverage, and forcefully pulling himself away.
Too soon, however, the spell exploded behind him, a forceful blast sending him flying to the side, his bow slipping from his grasp as he skidded along the floor a short ways. He'd put enough distance between himself and the spell to significantly lessen the damage, and as such, it was really only his pride that was injured by being tossed about by the mockery of a magister. The corpses descended on him before he could even rise to his feet, hacking down at him with ancient weaponry. He barely drew his knives in time to parry, before rolling away and scrambling to his feet, hacking the head clean off the corpse before him. He ducked under an incoming arrow, slashed an arm off another attacker, moving swiftly to ensure he was not surrounded. The arcane horror seemed content to let its minions deal with the elf, as no further spells came his way. He could only assume it had turned its attention on Amalia, or reentered the shield that had protected it.
Amalia wasn't in much of a position to do anything about the Arcane Horror aiming for Ithilian, as she still had three more skeletons to deal with at the time. Still, even as she parried an incoming swing with her poniard, using her other hand to grab the empty ribcage of the skeleton and yank it forward to break its lower spine over her knee, she registered the sound of a much more substantial body colliding with stone, and the clatter of wood as he presumably lost hold of his bow. Her lips compressed into a thin line, small but obvious evidence of displeasure, even as she caught the telltale dull roar of flames being conjured to life. The former magister was doubtless aiming for her now, and she needed to think fast. The Qunari's odd eyes flicked quickly over her two remaining menaces, and she grabbed the nearest one, earning herself a stab wound to the side in the process when a longsword sliced through her thin armor and into the right half of her abdomen.
Nevertheless, she pivoted, forcing the corpse to come along as she swung about in a half-circle, and as soon as the fireball hit the creature, she stabbed backwards with her knife, wrenching upwards to gut what flesh remained on the last of them. Ithilian, she could tell, was mobbed by many of the others, but they were slow and he was not. Of greater danger was the thing being allowed to throw spells about with impunity, and she was halfway to invisible, tucking her knife-handle between her teeth and drawing her chain, when it teleported, reappearing with a resounding noise perhaps three feet from her person. The disorienting spell it fired off caused her to stagger, unable to slip into stealth, and she was completely visible and at its mercy.
The ice that crawled its way up her left foot was some clue as to what was going on, and thankfully enough the biting chill was all she needed to regain her senses, and Amalia tugged, trying to free herself. The frost cracked, but did not give, and she was forced to the conclusion that unless she disrupted it, the problem would only grow worse. Her first chain toss went slightly wide when her side twinged in painful protest of the motion, still bleeding freely, though not particularly copiously. It would have to be ignored. The ice was up to her knee by the time she threw again, but this time she was much more sucessful, managing to wrap the length of linked chain several times about the Arcane Horror and pinning its arms to its sides. Its motion was now, more or less, hers to control. A precise toss of her knife embedded the weapon in the thing's other eye socket, but the arrow sticking out of the first had been enough to inform her that this alone would not be sufficient.
The corpses of the elven workers could not be simply ignored, even if Amalia had her hands entirely full with the magister, and so Ithilian steeled himself, going to work. "Souver'inan isala hamin," he spoke to the corpses as he tore into them, twin blades a flurry as he dodged, parried, countered, hacked limb from limb without hesitation. "Na melana sahlin." If there was any kind of release to be given to them from this, then he would see it done. At the very least, this demon had made a mockery of their deaths, and what was wrong needed to be put right.
His purpose clear, he blocked out the rest of the room, perhaps the rest of the world, as he tore the unwilling skeletal warriors to bits. If they wounded him, he did not feel it, or did not care. In short time, the last in the immediate area fell, Ithilian breathing heavily, but steadily. Given some room to breathe and work, the Dalish quickly went to retrieve his bow, seeing as the Qunari had gained some amount of control over the arcane horror. He quickly fired off a few arrows, each hitting the creature in a different area, and it struggled viciously against the chain restraining it.
A snarl forming on his lips, Ithilian drew steadily closer, walking towards the arcane horror, loosing arrows into it all the while. It was clearly weakening, and once both of its enemies were in range, electricity bristled from its fingertips, and even with its hands at its sides, it was able to cast the chain lightning spell, directing it at Ithilian. Spells were not an easy thing to dodge, and so Ithilian soon found himself roaring in pain and momentarily stunned as lightning coursed through his body, sending him to a knee before it arced away towards Amalia. Thoroughly annoyed at this point, Ithilian drew both his blades, intent on closing the distance. He wanted to see if this damn thing could keep casting spells without a head.
When the chain lightning rebounded towards her, Amalia had the sudden thought that ancient Tevinter must have been sorely lacking in scientific knowledge. "This is going to hurt you just as much as it hurts me," she murmured dryly, not even attempting to dodge the incoming bolt.
A Qunari scientist had once conducted an experiment involving lightning and metal. She imagined that it must have been much less painful, though perhaps no more informative, than this was about to be. Clamping her jaw shut so as not to bite her tongue off, Amalia tightened her grip on her chain and waited. It was... about as excruciating as she was expecting, give or take a few pins and needles. As it was, she was mercifully spared from the indignity of a very feminine scream by the fact that she was rather prepared for the endeavor. Not so for the former magister, and even as the energy from the bolt traveled from her body up her unconventional weaponry, leaving her numb and her skin tingling uncomfortably, she watched what must have passed for its musculature seize up, locking it in place as it was hit with its own spell.
She was not so foolish, and dropped the chain immediately, just in case.
The magister's spell had rebounded against it, and Ithilian would make certain to take advantage of the opening. He bolted forward, flipped his blades around backwards in his hands, and threw himself into the air upon reaching the creature, the same move he had used against the abomination the other day, but this time it was much more effective. The arcane horror released a shriek as the Dalish's weapons plunged into its chest, and it went down, chains still wrapped around its body. Even still, it thrashed against him, trying to muster up the mana for another spell.
Snarling, Ithilian ripped his right blade free from the chest, plunging it down just above the bridge of the creature's nose, the blade tearing through the skull between where the eybrows had been, to burst out the back end of the head, only stopping when the point of the blade was stopped by the stone of the ground. Still the thing struggled, refusing to die.
The elf was more or less lost to rage at this point, pulling the left blade free and plunging down through the chest several more times. "Ar... tu... na'din!" He shouted at it, the final word accompanying a horizontal slice across the neck, taking the arcane horror's head clean off, leaving it speared and stuck on Ithilian's other sword, and forcing the body to finally stop moving beneath him. Well, that answered that question. Indeed, the magister could not cast spells without a head.
He was still for a moment, breathing heavily, staring down at the arcane horror with his one remaining eye, at the severed head that still remained upon his blade. It was certainly no justice for those that had died here, and hardly what one could call vengeance, but perhaps he had given them some measure of peace. It would have to do. He stood slowly, looking about for any further threats, but the horror seemed to have been the source of them. Amalia seemed well enough, though there was the matter of the bleeding wound she had sustained, but Ithilian suspected she would be fine. He was done underestimating her. Instead, he moved back to the pile of bodies he had created, the corpses of the elven slaves. He gripped the head of the magister with a powerful hand, wrenching it free from the blade, and tossing it at their feet, before crouching down at their feet and speaking quietly.
"Vir sulahn'nehn. Vir dirthera. Vir samahl la numin. Vir lath sa'vunin. In uthenera na revas."
Amalia didn't need to speak Elvish to understand the general direction this one-sided conversation was taking. She couldn't say she shared the sentiment, particularly, mostly becuase she didn't make it her business to deal in sentiment at all, but she also didn't feel the need to be rude about it. So instead, she made herself useful, checking over her wound with a clinical eye. The first few layers of skin were sliced relatively cleanly, though she would not discount infection as a possibility given the amount of time these weapons must have been down here. It certainly didn't give off the impression of sterility, if indeed the ancients had actually known what that was in the first place. Somehow, she doubted it. The cut was about five inches long, and bleeding, though not profusely.
After a minor internal debate, Amalia shrugged and withdrew a vial from one of the pouches at her belt. Pulling out the stopper with her teeth, she downed the red concoction inside in one swallow, replacing the glass in a different compartment. It smarted rather badly, all things considered, but it was certainly better than the mix of yellowish pus and blood she'd be dealing with if the wound was left on its own and did take on too much dirt.
Waiting until she was fairly sure Ithilian was done speaking to corpses, the Qunari cocked her head to the side and spoke. "Injured?" She didn't have too many potions on her at present, but there was certainly one to be spared if he happened to need it. They did no good just sitting there, after all.
Ithilian didn't know what Qunari did with their dead, but he was glad at least that she hadn't interrupted him. Satisfied as he was going to get, the Dalish rose smoothly, sliding his blades back into their sheaths, his face rather devoid of any emotion, which was perhaps an improvement from the typical glare or frown or snarl of annoyance or hatred. "I'm fine," he responded to Amalia. The skeletons hadn't done anything major to him, and though the chain lightning spell was causing the muscles in his back to occasionally twinge in pain, there was little to be done about that but wait for it to pass. Amalia, as he expected, was fine, and the only remaining threat was this fugitive, who Ithilian couldn't imagine was more dangerous than the arcane horror, a pride demon possessing the deceased form of a magistrate.
"Let's be done with this," he suggested, moving onwards. Though the horror had made this room its home, the door was open to them to explore further. Perhaps the creature had simply been drawn to this place for the weakness in the Veil here, and refused to venture elsewhere. Or perhaps the fugitive had somehow controlled it or made a deal with it, and arranged for it to wait here for them. Either way, Ithilian suspected they weren't quite done yet, and he drew his bow, nocking an arrow in it as the pair ventured further into the ruins of the mine.