What Can One Grey Warden Do?

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WHO: Hercules, Jamie, Kain, Rachette, Alistair, Kaidan, Bethany, Dorian, Anders, and Nathaniel.
WHAT: The ambush and capture of Lord Livius Erimond
WHEN: Drakonis 4
WHERE: The Western Approach
NOTES: Info on this post. Feel free to start your own mingle threads for the journey there and back. Warning for violence.

It doesn't really rain here. The skies are blue and the sun is glaring, the sands shifting only when a merciful breeze blazes through, which isn't often. It's hardest on Team D, which has no shade or shelter. The other two teams are tucked away in the shadows, impossible to see as Erimond's party enters the gorge.

They had seen the demons from afar, Nathaniel peering through a spyglass. There are eight of them, each bound to a mage, and Nathaniel has chosen to continue with the plan, though he has urged everyone not to try to fight, only to push through with the plan as-is and get out. They are all very much outnumbered, but all they need to do is take one man.

So stay hydrated and move quickly, team. Anything can happen in the next few minutes.

[OOC: I will tag into each team thread as the action reaches each team. Feel free to mingle on team threads before then and react to the action in other threads. Also, please start your own threads for travel mingling, if you want that sort of thing. This will keep everything organized for everyone's AC purposes.]

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TEAM S

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Alistair and Nathaniel: Secure the target.

[byblow]

Outside of business and low-key heckling, Alistair has never had much to say to Nathaniel. At the moment, business has already been discussed, and heckling would be too inappropriate even for him, so he's been quiet, crouched in the shadows cast by rocky outcrops, sword stuck in the sand for balance. He doesn't move. But even without moving, the way he tenses up when they hear Erimond call out to the distraction team is detectable.

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Nathaniel lets Alistair keep an eye on proceedings. He is busying himself readying the drugged dart, careful not to touch the substance himself. Their differences they may have, but Nathaniel trusts Alistair to have his back in a fight.

Erimond appears now behind the main horde, arms folded, clearly ready to remain there until the threat is taken care of. Nathaniel loads the dart into a device that looks a bit like a tiny crossbow, slowly enough that the click cannot be heard over the sounds coming from the east.

Three more mages and five demons surge toward the staged distraction, and Nathaniel raises the device, loosing the dart toward Erimond. It sticks straight in the magister's exposed neck. Erimond does not seem to even notice it at first, the needle is so small. Nathaniel nods to Alistair, signaling him to go forth.

[byblow]

Alistair nods and stands at once, hefting himself and his mail up with his sword as a brace, and swings around the stone and out into the open with a particular lack of hesitation—the kind of clear-headed empowerment that comes from recent lyrium dosing.

With a clearer line of sight, he checks the distractors for signs of injury (or death). He's not above going off-book and letting Nathaniel hate him forever if someone he likes is in danger. But they're all still kicking, in one sense or another, and it's only a second or two of lost concentration before he zeroes back in on Erimond.

One target. Three remaining mages he would rather not kill. Demons that are definitely going down.

He pulls his shield off his back and doesn't check that Nathaniel is following.

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The magister frowns as the chatter from the west reaches his ears, muddled amidst the rest of the noise. But when Bethany speaks his name, Erimond's gaze snaps toward her direction. That's when Alistair and Nathaniel start coming for him, and he is looking straight at them when they appear.

"TO ME! TO ME!" he screams, flinging huge shards of ice in the direction of the men coming for him.

The shards of ice mostly miss their targets. One thuds hard and deep into Nathaniel's right arm, barely missing the artery. Nathaniel staggers slightly, but doesn't stop. He flings himself bodily at Erimond, throwing an arm around his neck as the magister's knees buckle, the drug taking effect. To the east, the mages and demons begin to redirect their fire.

"SUPPRESSING FIRE!" Nathaniel bellows to the team of mages at their end of the gorge.

[byblow]

Alistair is too slow, or conserving energy, or something, but he does make an obligatory attempt at shoving his shield sideways in front of Nathaniel while he shields his face with his bent sword arm. It's not enough. But he doesn't stop, either, Nathaniel downs Erimond, and Alistair slams his shield into the face of the nearest Warden mage. Hercules had the right idea there. Get down, stay down, don't die, he's sorry--

Less noisily, there's white light that bleeds out in licks over his mail and the blade of his sword. It's the only visible sign of a Templar's particular brand of quasi-magic, of connections to the Fade being cinched shut by his presence. He sticks close to Nathaniel and Erimonds' downed forms, nearly on top of them, purely playing defense against the closest demons until it's safer to help drag Erimond to his feet and out of the gorge.

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Mages and demons both stumble back as the white light ripples out. Then, Dorian's spell hits all full force. Demons scream. Mages cower. It's time.

As Erimond is hauled to his feet, Nathaniel remains on the ground, groaning in pain. The fall broke the ice spike in his arm in half. He barely claws to his feet, sweating and pale, stumbling forward to help Alistair.

"Horses," he gasps. If they can just get Erimond and Alistair to the horses, Nathaniel can collapse and bleed out knowing that at least their objective was accomplished.

After D

[justice_is_blond]

There'd been so much waiting, and now everything is happening at once. Nate looks a mess, though, which has Anders heading that way next. At least the target looks downed, but Alistair is glowing in a familiar way and Anders can't get too close yet.

"Get Erimond away from Nate!" He can't ask for Alistair to stop using Silence. Erimond could be faking and that's a risk they can't take. "Please." Shouting might not exactly be the brightest thing, but he's worried and throwing up as much of a barrier over them as he can manage while Alistair is still using his templar abilities.

[byblow]

Anders' shout cuts through the flurry of things Alistair had been trying to do: maintaining his focus, keeping Erimond upright and draggable, watching for a resurgence in the mages' and demons' attempts to fight, worrying about the others, considering the chances of Nathaniel dying in the sand. He hadn't been doing any of them particularly well. The instructions are a welcome interruption.

He doesn't hesitate. He hands his shield off to Nathaniel—a little forcefully, maybe, pushing it into his chest before releasing it, as much to free one of his hands as to leave Nathaniel with something to maybe, sort of, defend himself with if Anders and his barriers don't do the trick. (It's only a plain wooden shield, unremarkable, grabbed on the way out of the Warden stronghold in Montsimmard. Alistair won't miss it if he never gets it back.) That leaves an arm free for him to heft Erimond over one shoulder.

He hopes the man is conscious enough to remember it later and feel incredibly undignified, for the minute or so he's allowed to feel anything but pain and fear before they kill him.

Alistair isn't very dignified, either, trying to walk in sand with a longsword and a magister in tow, but he manages to get out of the way.

[justice_is_blond]

He gives Alistair a nod of thanks before closing the distance between himself and Nate and starting to get to work. The bleeding's top priority. Nate's lost a lot and is in danger.

"Just had to get stabbed, didn't you," he mutters as he works, stemming the flood and trying to get Nate's body to work on replacing what has been lost. "You're not allowed to die yet. Purrelden wouldn't know what to do with herself without your face to climb on in the middle of the night. Plus you're taller than me, which means you're very convenient to duck behind if anyone chooses to throw things when we return."

His speech is fairly well-timed; years of healing will do that. By the time he's ending it, he's also got Nate's circulatory system stable.

"Arm around my shoulder. We need to get to the horses too." The rest can come later.

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Nathaniel groans in response to Anders. His face is grey, features drawn. But he is on his feet, and looping an arm around Anders' shoulders. The odd thing is that he feels safer, probably a response to Anders' calm healer-talk, lecturing him about trivial things. That damned kitten.

They stagger together to the horses. Nathaniel needs help to mount, but once he is mounted, he can direct the horse one-handed easily enough.

"Rendezvous point is two miles," he grumbles. "Going to feel like ten."

[byblow]

"You'll be fiiine, Howe," Alistair says. His tone is offhand, but the look he shoots Nathaniel's way—somewhere in the midst of his struggle to wrangle Erimond's sluggish form onto a horse—is concerned, genuinely, for exactly the length of time it takes him to confirm that Anders has done his job and Nathaniel is probably not going to die. That isn't the best news; he's heard better. But it is good news.

He spares a look back toward the fighting, too, though he can't see any longer. Hopefully no one is dead. And hopefully Erimond is genuinely and fully incapacitated, because Alistair can't keep this up another two miles. Once Alistair has him slung over the horse's back, he slaps him, just to check his reflexes, before he relaxes his reinforcement of the Veil.

[justice_is_blond]

"Howe? Because of me." He knows it's not being asked, but he's going to tease and harass Nate into staying awake and with them. They need to be away from here, and they need to be somewhere stable so he can truly do more for Kain and Nate beyond simply stabilize them enough to move.

And for the others. There's a slew of injuries, and while Bethany can certainly help, he's the main healer. Anders is going to have his work cut out for him in two miles.

He helps Nate into the saddle and hovers for a moment, making sure there's no need to secure the man to it. Once assured there isn't, Anders is getting into his own saddle and looking around, trying to make sure everyone's mounted and intact enough to ride. Except Herc. There's nothing he can do there, though. They need to take Erimond and go.

"Remember the time the pair of Ogres broke through the wall and surprised us? That was nearly three miles back to the surface, hiking in the dark. We can manage a two-mile ride. As can they."

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"Easy for you to say," Nathaniel grumbles, but he turns his horse with his left hand. Shaking, sweating, strangely cold despite the sun. "Give the bastard another slap for me, will you, Alistair?"

But he is silent for the rest of the road to the rendezvous point, conserving energy to stay in his saddle.