"Yeah," he murmurs, and tries, knowing it won't work, to listen for the sound of Dorian's footsteps. "You too."
And then it's just him. Him, and the dark, and the stone on every side, and the beating of his heart. And the spirit giving him that light.
Be creepier if the thing could talk, anyway. He's probably better off.
He's been hurt worse than this, had to move quicker, without any backup to even hope for. The part of him that's saying this is just as bad as that, that this might be worse, that part of him is full of shit, and what he needs to do is move.
He moves.
Without anyone else to focus on, anybody else to think for, the world goes away. If the Bull was thinking of anything right now, he might say that makes all this easier. Worse, maybe, but easier. Easier to forget that there's anything but the stone beneath his hands, pain throbbing up his ankle and across his skin, in his muscles, the dark in front of him and the unnatural green shining off his hands and his breath quick in his ears. The sound of his leg dragging behind him. There's a rhythm you get into.
The way out takes him by surprise. He realises he's been seeing light for a while and when he looks up and sees the break in the wall it's coming from his heartbeat stutters, he leans against one wall in that way that doesn't really give him any more room but lets him pretend it does, and he breathes. And he breathes.
Dorian. Dorian is waiting for him.
He rolls onto his foot. He leans over on the wall. He stands, and looks at the pile of rubble in front of him, and feels the rest of the world starting to come back.
Rubble's up to his thigh. Nothing to do but try and climb over it.
He leans against the wall, lifts his leg. Tries to still his foot but it swings on his ankle without any input from him, and between leaning against the wall and breathing through the pain he doesn't catch the big stone knocked off the top of the pile before it's falling, the clatter echoing off the walls as it goes.
Might not be a problem. The air is dank here, wet and old, strong enough here to make the darkspawn smell hard to untangle from the rest of it. Hard to tell for certain.
The safe thing would be to turn back.
No one's here to keep it together for; when the thought makes his already tense muscles go stiff, makes his heart gamely try to go faster than it already is, he doesn't try to hide it.
He's here to find a way out, anyway. So he's going to find a way out. He finishes hopping over with his good leg, tries to make it quick enough that he can lean back on the wall, on the rubble, and not put any weight on his bad one.
Good. Next.
He still has to stoop but he can see just enough to tell that a little ways off, the room gets wider. There's a doorway there across the room. More than one, maybe. But behind this doorway there's light. The Bull hunches over against the wall and hops his way toward it.
And then, too late, he hears a noise. The smell starts getting stronger. The Bull starts thinking very quickly.
Getting to the doorway is his only chance. It's a shitty chance, but not letting them surround him might be all he has. He keeps moving, leaning on the wall with one hand, finally trying to untangle that cloth from around his horns with the other and winding it hurriedly around his face. The moment he wraps it over his mouth keeping his breathing under control is impossible but it doesn't matter, because it's done. A little optimistic, maybe, thinking he's going to live long enough to care whether he swallowed any tainted blood here, but it's done, and he's still moving-
But he isn't moving quick enough. The darkspawn are here. He shifts his posture - if he's going to die, he's going to do it at least looking like he's on his own two feet - and slings out his axe, battered but whole, grits his teeth, waits until one comes close enough that he can reach it just by pushing off with one foot and he roars, the sound filling the space and spilling outward, out the doorways and into whatever's behind. Into the open air that he's never going to see.
A moment later there's a noise of pain and he's sprawled out on his side on the ground, skin covered in dried blood and deep scrapes and gouges from the fall, side heaving fast with his breaths, hand clenched around the handle of his axe.
It's not the death he wanted. A stupid death born out of being too weak going into this compounded, probably, by a couple dumb little mistakes, downed before he can even fight and dying for nothing at all - but, hey, the silver lining: if no one's around to see it, maybe they'll tell themselves he put up a good fight. He's still, at least, got a couple more swings left to take. He isn't going to waste them.
Dorian keeps chalk in a pouch on his belt – one never knows when one will need to set a magical ward, after all – and as he climbs through the broken wall, he pulls it out. Well, he pulls the largest piece out, at any rate. It seems to have been cracked and crushed in the fall, and Dorian is hardly surprised. It's large enough for his purposes – that is, to mark his way in order to navigate his way back to the dilapidated office.
There's a dwarven embassy in every major city in the Tevinter Imperium, but Dorian has never had reason to step foot in one. It's not until his time with the Inquisition that Dorian has had reason to admire these underground settlements. There was an instructor at one of the many Circles Dorian attended who had a formicarium, where ants constructed delicate mazes and chambers. Dorian is reminded of it every time the Inquisitor has cause to bring him down into some all but forgotten thaig.
He's careful to keep quiet the entire time, trying to ignore the ugly stink of darkspawn, trying to ignore the sickening way his head throbs. He passes by rows of old rooms, by ancient stone furniture, by old shattered wooden carts. He passes by piles of skeletons – the former denizens of the thaig, Dorian wagers – and feels the weight of spirits pressing against the Veil.
Felix never told him what happened when he, his mother, and their family retainers had been attacked. An unbearable memory, Dorian had assumed. Felix hadn't wanted to talk about it, and Dorian now realizes with a twisting lurch that he hadn't wanted to listen. Dorian was an awful friend, he thinks. He wonders how it was that Felix could stand him, all those years.
But he remembers Felix at his worst. Remembers how pale and gaunt he had been, how weak he had become before Dorian and Alexius had managed their first small breakthrough. A combination of time magic and magical tinctures had managed to buy Felix a few more days – but that hadn't been enough for either Dorian or Alexius. Those days soon became weeks, then slowed to months, then finally became an extra year or two when they hit the limitations of their combined skills.
Neither of them mentioned the use of blood magic, but Dorian knew it was hovering distantly at the back of Alexius' mind. Nothing was ever enough.
He remembers, too, the sweat on Felix's brow, his ashen complexion, the shadows beneath his eyes and hollowing out his cheeks when he surged into Dorian's little camp on the outskirts of Redcliffe. Felix had told him of the Venatori's plans to march on Haven, rushing to stuff Dorian's pack with extra rations, extra supplies, before Dorian even had a chance to react.
Dorian nearly refused to abandon Felix a second time, but as he shouldered his pack, as he prepared himself to run, he grabbed hold of Felix's elbow, had said, "Try not to die."
"There are worse things than dying, Dorian," Felix had told him.
And now, Felix is gone. Dorian refuses to fail anyone so spectacularly ever again.
The Bull is wandering in the dark, injured and lost, and Dorian won't fail him. If Dorian dies, then the chances of the Bull's survival plummet almost exponentially. His stomach twists at the thought before he forcibly shoves it from his head.
Dorian's wandering finally brings him to a dead end, and he curses, feels frustration and real fear starting to curl up and grip his throat, making his eyes sting and water. One side is completely collapsed, and the side that remains intact is made almost impassable by the fallen debris. The lyrium lamps built into the columns that remain still glow gamely, and an idle part of Dorian wonders if this was an area of some import to have gone to such efforts to light it.
He turns to double back when he hears it – the distant crash of something heavy falling. He freezes, pressing himself into a shadowy corner and curling his hand around the wisp to conceal the light. There's no movement around him, and he allows himself a deep breath before pushing away.
It's impossible to ignore – the screech and hiss and guttural shouts of darkspawn finding prey. The abrupt familiarity of the Bull's battle cry. The clash of metal against meat and bone and more metal. The stone distorts the sound, makes it impossible to tell how close or far, but the wisp floats away from him, hovers near a heavy stone door blocked by rubble. Somehow, Dorian just knows, and terror churns in his gut, freezing his heart, before determination burns through him.
The time for stealth is done, it seems.
Which is just as well, because Dorian acts on instinct. He shoves both of his arms forward, the head of his staff aimed at the pile of stone, and shoves. The Veil reacts, a wave of force sending the stones scattering with a thunderous boom and clearing his path. He rushes forward, and when another heavy stone door blocks his way, he presses his fingertips to his temple, shoves out another telekinetic wave to force it open.
Better to be angry, and so Dorian is. Better to be focused, and so Dorian is that, too. Better than being terrified. Better than thinking about being torn apart. Better than thinking about helplessly wasting away. Better than living with the thought of surviving by selfishly abandoning and betraying the Bull.
From this close, the darkspawn stench is horrendous, trapped in by the stone around them, and Dorian concentrates on keeping his mouth shut – a helpful tip, Lieutenant Renn, thank you. They hardly seem distracted by his abrupt entrance, focused they are on their current target.
His spells come out with a near dizzying speed. First, a barrier to coat the both of them in flickering blue light. Then, a column of fire to take out the genlock attempting to take advantage of the Bull being knocked to the ground. Then, a Fade Step to close the gap between himself the Bull, and Dorian swings his staff down, slamming the focus against another genlock's head, feeling the satisfying crunch of bone.
It's his first thought. Well- his first thought is appreciation for the obvious power in Dorian's entrance. That boom before Dorian forces his way in, the fire. But that part happens in the background of his mind, automatic. The kind of thing that doesn't really count as a thought so much as a reaction.
His second thought is about swinging his axe at the nearest genlock's knees, about the need to angle the hit so the thing falls back from Dorian, instead of toward him. "You need distance!" he shouts, not daring to look up at Dorian again because his range of vision's shitty enough right now as it is, but knowing too well what he saw. "Your mask!" Not that Dorian doesn't know he doesn't have that little piece of protection on him any more. There's no way he doesn't know. But it feels important, right now, to remind him.
Better chance that Dorian will back away if the Bull backs away too. Not something he'd do normally - the right move is still to try and bottle the darkspawn, however many or few there are, up at the doorway - but it's not like he's going to be able to help with that, not like this, so he starts pulling himself backward, glancing around to make sure the path from him to the wall is clear. If he can get his back to a wall again, that won't be nothing.
If Dorian had time enough for it, he would shoot the Bull a glare that would practically scream, You think I don't know?
As it stands, he only manages a grunt in response – it's all he can offer while he focuses on keeping his lips pressed tightly together. The Bull lops off a genlock's legs below the knees, and when it falls back, Dorian stabs his staff's blade through its throat, ensuring it won't remain a problem. Distance is a luxury he cannot afford at the moment – not if he means to defend the Bull. The Bull has the right idea, falling back, and Dorian takes a careful step to keep the two of them close together.
Southerners tended to be wary of mages as a rule. Summoning a bit of ice to cool a drink or a bit of fire to light a candle was liable to spur someone into screaming, "Abomination!" But if that mage happens to be a necromancer? Well, the mage would be lucky to escape unscathed. It's why Dorian uses spells from that specialization sparingly. But this situation is desperate, so Dorian doesn't hold back, like he normally might.
Dorian doesn't turn, though, only keeping the Bull in his periphery while he focuses on the room at large. He splays a hand before clenching it into a fist, gathering the energy of the recently killed. It surges through him, gives him a burst of power, and he channels it into a wall of flame that bursts to life around the two of them in a semi-circle, protecting them from the bulk of the darkspawn charging into the room while still giving the Bull room to back himself toward the wall.
He reaches across the Veil, grabbing hold of a few curious wisps and pressing them into the bodies of the dead darkspawn. The corpses rise, wreathed in the swirling, violet light of Dorian's magic, and leap through the wall of flame to attack their enemies.
The Bull stares, his backward crawl slowing as he watches corpses lifting themselves up, powered by Dorian's magic and by something else, something that just by the skin of Dorian's teeth balances on the right side of possession. Not being able to see all of it, a head caved in and still upright, a reaching hand wrapped in glowing purple, just glimpses caught through a wall of fire - there's something about seeing it that way makes the whole thing look worse.
If he was watching just anyone do that, some mage he didn't know, it would be easy to say no one should have that kind of power. But when it's someone on his team, someone he's seen down and vulnerable and trying not to look like he's hurting, someone who'll boast all day but doesn't know how to take a compliment, who worries about him, who's risking something worse than death on the off chance he'll be able to get the Bull out of this - when it's Dorian, who will use his magic on stupid little things as easy as breathing and doesn't know how to leave a man behind-
It's weird. Still creepy as shit, but it's weird. How this can be up there on the list of the freaky crap he's seen, and not feel like a threat.
"Neat trick," the Bull says, the smallest hint of something unsettled running beneath his voice that could be coming from anywhere. It probably isn't, actually, only just from the one thing; it's been a really shitty day.
He starts dragging himself a little faster again.
"Out the way you got in, while they're busy? Is all this going to last that long, or are we going to have to run for it?"
We. Run. A couple words are doing a lot of work in that sentence there. The Bull can retreat, anyway, after some kind of fashion. It looks like Dorian's not going to leave him behind to run off himself, so they'll have to figure it out.
With that bare bit of space, Dorian finally gives himself a moment to glance over his shoulder, to take in the Bull's state.
Something wrong with one of his legs, or else the Bull would be moving more quickly. Broken knee? Broken ankle? In the light of the flame he sees the drying blood on what's exposed of the Bull's skin – not nearly dark enough for any of it to have come from the darkspawn.
"I can do this all day," he says – there's no smugness in his voice, no false bravado. It's a simple, grim fact, born of absolute resolve – an answer without fully explaining himself. The fire wall will fade, the shambling corpses will eventually become too damaged for the spirits to maintain their holds, but Dorian will do everything he can. He'll keep casting his spells, because there's little point to him if he can't.
He splays out a hand against, curling his fingers toward his palm as he draws out the energy of another darkspawn slain by his corpses. He grips his staff with both hands, swinging the focus up over his head and slamming it down. Behind the wall of flame, the spectral image of a skull appears overhead, yawning its mouth wide until it flickers out of existence, and the darkspawn shriek and scream as they scatter away, minds momentarily overtaken by Dorian's Horror spell.
The wall of fire is starting to flicker, starting to shrink, and Dorian shouts over his shoulder, "Get to the door! I'll cover you."
If the Bull didn't already have every reason in the world to take this seriously, Dorian's tone would do it. He hurries, getting close enough to the wall in the next couple seconds to lever himself up, then takes an instant to judge the distance from where he is to the door. If he angles his leg right, holds himself a certain way, goes fast enough, the brace will take enough of his weight to keep him up. That's sort of what it's for, after all - keep that spot from slipping too far a certain way. Almost what it's for. It might be dented and bent up, it has to do the job.
And if that makes it worse, gets the whole damn ankle that much closer to being done for good - well. Dorian isn't going to leave until the Bull does. Which means they're getting out of here. Anything that happens after that has to be worth it.
He's not going to make Dorian wait, or spend so much energy on this now that it's going to mess Dorian up later. There's no time left to hesitate. So he doesn't hesitate. He goes, hunching below the ceiling, leaning forward so the bent bottom lip of the brace digs into the top of his foot with every step, breath whistling in and out between clenched teeth and then he's through the doorway, not a good idea to stop or it will be that much harder to get going again but he has to stop once he's got that semblance of cover, has to make sure that Dorian's coming behind him.
He leans back against the wall, all his weight on his right foot, chest heaving fast and teeth still clenched. "Dorian!" That will be enough to get him here. It had better be. The Bull will be ready to start moving again the moment Dorian makes it back here too - his body isn't going to like it but if he can lean on this wall and kind of hop, put as little weight as possible on that ankle, then for a while he can move. If he doesn't try to put any real weight on it then he won't collapse, and until that happens, he knows how to use the pain.
He only half-listens to the Bull moving behind him, keeping more focused on the darkspawn to prevent them from flanking the two of them. He fires blast after blast from his staff – simple shots while he recovers his energy.
What he wouldn't give for a lyrium potion just about now.
The genlock corpse missing its legs finally collapses, too damaged from the way its former brethren hacked at it. The spirit it contained slips away, returning to the ether, and Dorian has mind enough to offer it a quick word of thanks before he gathers more energy to himself. Another fresh corpse surrenders its energy to Dorian, and it bolsters Dorian's mana, fills him with vigor.
Just in time, as the fire wall finally burns out.
Dorian's corpses and various spells have made a decent dent in the horde, but he can hear more of the things climbing over themselves to fill in the gaps of their fallen. They're far too enthralled by the idea of fresh meat, Dorian would wager.
His fingertips touch his temple – just beneath the swelling from when he had smacked his head during the fall – and his magic rushes away from him again in another psychic blast. The closest darkspawn stumble away, some of them knocked clear off their feet. Dorian finishes the job by sweeping a hand upward, unleashing a fireball that explodes and burns several of the darkspawn alive.
The Bull shouts his name, and Dorian wreathes himself in magical energy again, letting it shoot him through the narrow gap of the doorway. Cold air swirls around him when he stops, and he spins, both hands balled into fists as he punches upward, raising a jagged wall of ice to block the door.
It's a temporary measure, at best – and even now, he can hear the darkspawn attempting to hack and claw away at it, shrieking and grunting and letting out those hideous, guttural moans. Dorian rushes to the Bull's bad side, and while he's uncertain if he can fully support the Bull's weight, he assumes any assistance is far better than none.
"We need to keep moving." Dorian is breathing heavily, ignoring the strange hollowness starting to grow in his core – a side effect of casting too much, too often. Magical exhaustion, in a way. He's learned how to work through it, and he puts those skills to use now. "There's stone I can use in the next room to block them in."
"Got it," the Bull says, intending to lean on Dorian only as much as he has to to keep from slowing them down. No time to argue about it, no time to figure out if there's a way he can put any real weight on Dorian without knocking Dorian over. There's only time to go. "Lead the way."
The Bull lets out a hard breath with every other step but he sets a quick pace, and with that pace he gets there. Once they get into that next room he keeps moving, wanting to give Dorian enough room to work, and once he has the Bull leans there, takes a moment to force his breathing to slow down a little, to sit there with the pain.
"Might buy us some time," he manages, shifting his focus over after that moment to concentrate on Dorian again, gaze moving over him to look for any signs of injury, or darkspawn blood, or anything worth worrying about at all. First time he's seen Dorian since before they fell and it's hard not to compare it, to take how it felt watching Dorian standing there next to him whole and safe, wondering what expression Dorian had been wearing behind that mask, and set that next to what he's seeing now. He wonders how much everything between then and now messed his sense of time up, whether it all feels longer than it actually was. How long it's actually been. How far away the rest of their little group might be. "What are the chances the boss heard some of that? We weren't really quiet, and sound seems like it carries down here."
Dorian tucks himself beneath the Bull's arm on his bad side and wraps an arm around the Bull's waist to help stabilize him. He shoulders as much of the Bull's weight as he can – or, more accurately, as much as the Bull allows – and hurries them into the next room.
Behind them, the darkspawn howl and screech, knocking down more of the ice wall, but it holds, for the most part. By the time Dorian has led the two of them into the half-collapsed hallway, only the top portion has broken enough to allow one darkspawn to poke out its head. Dorian obligingly splays his hand and flicks his wrist, freezing the creature in place.
He leaves the Bull propped up against a nearby wall, clear of the doorway, and quickly returns to his position. An arrow whizzes through the gap of the doorway, missing Dorian's cheek by mere inches, and he grits his teeth. Green energy surrounds him as he calls upon the Fade, arms thrown out to either side, and he commands the stone boulders to fully barricade the door. They obligingly roll and float into place, and once they've dropped and settled, sending out a cloud of dust, Dorian lets himself finally take a breath.
He's shaking, he realizes. Probably from the fading battle high, but also probably from the revulsion coursing through him and twisting his stomach, and also from the exertion of casting so many powerful spells in succession. His head throbs, now that he's letting himself notice, and he feels a little nauseated – but Dorian would rather chalk that up to his exhaustion and his concussion than to the possibility that he's somehow just been infected with—
Dorian's mind quickly jerks away from that train of thought.
He glances over at the Bull, and realizes the man is examining him closely.
"I'm fine," Dorian says quickly, and he manages to sound suitably convincing. He's— well, he's not, but he would wager he's in far better shape than the Bull. "If we're lucky, we'll have made enough of a racket that half the Inquisition could find us."
He hurries toward the Bull, moving to tuck himself the man's bad side again.
"We need to find someplace safe so I can tend to your wounds."
The Bull nods, part of him focusing on his breathing, another part feeling Dorian next to him. Helpful, in a way he bets Dorian doesn't mean it to be; it's not like Dorian can hold most the Bull's total weight with anything other than magic, but the Bull can try and feel just how steady Dorian is now, look at how he's doing up close, try and gauge a little better how much all that took out of him.
It's something he'd be doing anyway but it helps, having something to focus on that isn't him. Someone else's problems. Maybe Dorian's feeling the same way. If someone can get something that isn't terrible out of this whole damn ankle thing, then Dorian should get to have it. They both probably need every little piece of whatever keeps them going that they can get right now.
"Yeah, and I bet you need a rest." He looks around, decides on a direction, takes a slower, bracing breath. Leaning mostly against the wall and a little against Dorian, the Bull starts moving. He can add some more 'not terrible' to this, he thinks. Not a lot, but for the moment, they've got time. They're alive. The mood might not get a whole lot better, but that doesn't mean the Bull can't do a better job now than he did crawling through that hallway earlier.
Dorian's here, not just a voice that was only half as strong as his heart pounding in his ears but here, close enough to see, to feel. The ceiling is too low, still, but the room is open. Not great, maybe. But better. So the Bull can do better.
"After doing all that, I mean." He pauses, takes a breath against the pain that sounds louder trapped inside the mask. Keeps going. "Hot damn, what a show!" Another pause, shorter, quieter, and after he takes that second for himself he makes his voice kind of smug and teasing. "Sometimes I almost think you actually could take me on, if you really wanted to."
Dorian manages to let out a laugh – just a puff of air that manages to hint at amusement.
"I could absolutely take you on," he replies, just the right amount of haughty, "and it would be your own fault for underestimating me if I found reason enough to best you."
The Bull is warm at his side, and more importantly alive. Perhaps the Bull had downplayed the seriousness of his injuries before, but Dorian is gratified, at least, that he hadn't been completely lying. The man is mostly intact, and while Dorian can't mend all of his hurts – he has only rudimentary knowledge of healing spells, after all – he can at least do a bit to patch things up.
He hesitates for a bit before he slowly ventures, "I'm surprised you were impressed."
There's a touch of caution to his voice. Dorian is hardly ashamed of his skills and would be the first to applaud himself, but he knows the Bull's relationship with magic is fraught, at best. And according to some people – mostly plebeians with no understanding of the nuances of magic – necromancy isn't that much better than blood magic.
The Bull glances over at him. There's no way in any world that he'd be grateful that Dorian doesn't have a mask right now, but if Dorian's face is right there to help him gauge the mood behind the comment, then the Bull is going to look.
"What?" the Bull asks, like he can't at least make a guess. There's another one of those pauses again while the Bull acknowledges the pain; right now it's a greedy thing trying to steal all his attention, and if he hands that attention out in moments then he can direct the rest of it where he really needs to. "You blow an old dwarven door right off its hinges, start raining fire everywhere, and take out as many darkspawn on your own as an entire team of warriors all just to keep my butt out of the fire and I'm going to, what? Start critiquing your form?"
He looks over at Dorian again. Yeah the Bull didn't mention one particular part of of Dorian's whole rescue in that little recounting there, but it's kind of hard to make every single part of what Dorian did back there sound cool. Trying wouldn't sound natural, because he couldn't mean it. Might ruin his message. And the message itself is the true part anyway, not how excited he did or didn't get over every single detail. "What else did you think I was going to be?"
"Solas would," Dorian replies, trying to mirror some of the Bull's lightness. "Critique my form, that is."
But it would take a fool to notice that the Bull is making a rather glaring omission, and Dorian lets out a breath. Of course it bothered the Bull. It bothers nearly everyone outside of Nevarra, and even some people from Nevarra. Cassandra had given him a wide berth the first time he had placed a wisp into a corpse, only to later probe with questions to discover what type of person he was, whether he was the type to bind wisps to corpses and have them shambling after him like some sort of retainer. Even some mages in Tevinter find necromancy distasteful.
He frowns at the Bull's obvious pulse of pain, grip tightening on the Bull's arm before Dorian nudges them toward what might have once been a storage room. He had passed by it earlier while exploring the place – evidenced by the line of chalk he left by the doorway – and he guides the Bull in. There's a stone table – tall and sturdy enough to support a man of Bull's size – and Dorian guides him toward it.
"I save it for emergencies," he explains quietly. The Bull may be avoiding the topic, and as simple as it would be for Dorian to go along with him, Dorian won't. He's not ashamed of his magic, but in this case, he understands the worry that comes along with it – and his responsibility as a practitioner to assuage those worries. "I don't make a habit of animating skeletons and having them carry me about in a palanquin – though perhaps I should."
"Yeah, that's one way to leave an impression," the Bull says, bracing himself to move away from any wall to lean against long enough to make it to the table Dorian's moving him toward.
He feels his breath moving in harsh gusts through his nose, leans on Dorian a little more than he wants to and his bad leg a lot more than he should, and tries to drag the conversation to the top of his thoughts, think about that while the rest of him does the things it needs to. Dorian isn't really playing along; for him that means things are serious, that the topic is important enough for him to draw that kind of attention to it. Which means the Bull's answer wasn't the right one, that he must have miscalculated.
Better, then, to ask him straight out. The Bull makes it to the table, turns, hops up. The pain is still what it is, but at least he doesn't have to put any weight on the thing until they have to move again.
"Like I said," he goes on, now that the part of his mind that had been keeping him moving is free up enough to help him focus on it. "What else did you think I was going to do? Get pissed off at you? Go back and report you to the templars?"
Dorian shuts the heavy stone door behind them once the Bull has seated himself – for whatever good it will do if any darkspawn do manage to make their way into the ruins. He assumes if they're quiet, if they remain out of sight, the darkspawn would be likely to pass over the room.
The wisps still float around them, but Dorian adds a few more to their number to drift around the ceiling. It's hardly daylight in here, but it's far easier to see by.
"You might lecture me," he replies, though the expression on his face says he would prefer to avoid that. He looks the Bull over with a critical eye, now that there's time and light for it. "Tell me of the dangers of tampering with such strange forces. Or reprimand me for my cavalier and disrespectful treatment of the dead."
By his tone of voice, Dorian has had this conversation several times over.
"Is the ankle the worst of it?" he asks, clipped and business-like to conceal his worry. "Or is there any other damage I'm not seeing?"
The Bull doesn't think there's anything else, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad question. He grunts and doesn't answer for a couple seconds, leaning forward under the low ceiling with his hands braced on the edge of the table and shifting around, going over everything he feels when he moves this part of him or that one, double checking his own injuries. The bad ones can hide from you, sometimes, especially if some other hurt is taking up more of your attention.
"Pretty sure that's it," he decides. "Everything else is just the surface stuff." The gouges, the scrapes covering most of him - they're going to hurt for a while, and itch like shit once they start healing, but they look worse than they are. The leg's the only real injury there. Considering how far he fell, every place inside his body that isn't screaming at him right now can probably be traced back to Dorian.
Kind of weird to think about - how the Bull owes everything to Dorian right now a handful of times over, and Dorian still expects the Bull to give him shit for it. It's a good way to spend this little break of theirs, trying to convince Dorian otherwise. It would be nice if he could do it.
He goes through the points, one at a time. "If I start lecturing you on magic, start checking my food for weird mushrooms. I know you too well to pull that kind of crap. You don't need me to start telling you how dangerous all those forces are. And considering the kind of things you just took out? I'm pretty sure you didn't disrespect them enough."
He watches Dorian a moment. "That really the kind of stuff you think I've got to say to you?"
The response earns a small, halfhearted smile as he crouches down in front of the Bull. Dorian's healing magic is basic, at best – the sort of fundamental skills one teaches a fledgling mage to gauge his interest and aptitude. He rests both hands above the Bull's ankle, palms glowing with the same green as the floating wisps as he assesses the damage.
"You wouldn't have been the first," he replies, voice and gaze a little distant as he examines the injury. "I mostly hear it from Vivienne. Cassandra, sometimes. She enjoys telling me cautionary tales about her uncle, a Mortalitasi. She says the smell of embalming fluid makes her want to retch. Sera isn't much of a fan, either, for obvious reasons, and neither is Cole, though he's not quite so direct with his criticisms, as you might imagine. I found myself apologizing to him, nevertheless."
The boy had seemed so distressed at the time.
With the injury properly examined, he draws another wisp across the Veil, channeling its energies to partially mend some of the damage.
"This may be painful," he warns, though he's already set to work. "This will be a temporary measure a best. A healer with legitimate training will need to see to this."
The Bull tenses up but lets Dorian do his thing, holding himself still. A little more pain at this point isn't really a drop in the bucket.
"I don't know," he says, watching Dorian's hands. Getting healed by magic isn't something he's a huge fan of either, even though sometimes he couldn't fight the way he does without it. That's not a discomfort he thinks too hard about, these days. Not since the earlier days in Orlais with the Bleeders. Some things you just have to get used to. Maybe it's the topic that's making him more aware of it now, making him try harder to sort it all out and put it into words.
"Vivienne just doesn't like not being the biggest, baddest thing around, probably just trying to feel like she's still in control. The rest of them- eh, none of them are here, so I guess it doesn't matter. If you really want me to join that club you're going to have to start pulling that crap on someone who isn't trying to kill you, and I don't think that's going to happen. You don't feel like the type. Besides, you think you think I don't know how hard you've been working to keep me in one piece? I'm not that much of an asshole. I am actually impressed. You pulled some pretty impressive shit. I might not be that excited about all of it, but I'm alive to get over it. Not going to forget that that's all down to you just because you made a call about what needed to get done."
Briefly, Dorian glances up at the Bull, frowning at him. With the Bull's mask mostly intact, it's impossible to gauge his expression, to determine whether or not he might be telling a convenient lie to assuage Dorian's imagined discomfort. Dorian needs no such reassurances – by now, he's used to being a pariah – but he's at least a little relieved that they won't have to waste their time with the Bull launching into talks of ethics.
Dorian spends a few moments focusing, on trying not to do more damage in his attempts to fix things. After a few minutes, he rocks back, the glow fading from his hands as he settles them in his lap.
"That's as much as I'm comfortable mending." Admittedly, he thinks, it wasn't much, but it should be enough to attempt limping on, though not much else. "If I try anything more, I'm bound to get something wrong, and some healer might harangue me for making things worse."
For a second, he falls silent, before he lets out a breath. "You're certain? I know you're— not comfortable with more esoteric types of magic." An understatement, admittedly, but sometimes Dorian can manage a bit of tact, when he cares to. "If you've anything to say, now's the time to do it, while it's still fresh. I'd rather we have everything out in the open."
For those few minutes, the Bull figures that's it. He said his piece, Dorian heard him even if he doesn't look like he really believes it, and maybe that's it. So the Bull just sits there, feeling the healing magic inside his leg, looking away from it at the wisps, magic everywhere he looks - and that makes it kind of funny, when Dorian says he knows the Bull isn't 'comfortable' with it. If he cared about always being comfortable, avoiding magic altogether, hanging out with Dorian in the first place would have been a pretty dumb move.
But they're not talking about magic in general. That might be a good sign, that maybe Dorian's not as worried about whether the Bull's just uncomfortable around him altogether any more, that they're talking about this one kind of magic now instead. Doesn't necessarily mean anything, but maybe they're making progress.
Dalish never seemed to worry this much about this stuff. But then, it hasn't really come up. The mage thing is an open secret, yeah, but she doesn't wear it on her sleeve the same way Dorian does.
If it is a problem for her, she hasn't said anything about it. The Bull would have been able to tell, though. Wouldn't he? Weird thought, that one. He hasn't really wondered that before.
"You want it out in the open?" He shrugs. Maybe Dorian isn't really going to feel settled until he hears at least a little something negative. Hopefully he doesn't need the Bull to sound annoyed about it, though. If this is going to go the way the Bull wants it to, he's got to sound casual. Which isn't really hard. This is something he's got worked out with himself already and it works for him, even if Dorian hasn't quite caught up. "Sure. That stuff gives me the creeps. If you can put some 'spirit' into a dead body, if you can do all that once they're dead, how close is that to doing it while they're still alive? You or, you know, anyone else who can do any of that crap. That's what I think about when I see it. But like I said: I trust you. Say someone I'm fighting with likes to use a... I don't know, beehive on a stick to beat all his enemies. I'm going to feel a little weird about seeing it, but as long as the bees only go after the bad guys I'm going to rest easy.
"Besides, all the stuff we've gone through, even just in the past month - I get that I didn't give you as much reason as you gave me to think this way but in that uh, that temple, even just then, I got a lot of reasons to trust you. And a few more after that. A lot more of them today. I decide to throw all that away just because you can do something I don't like, I'm going to have to turn in my ben-hassrath card. You're a good guy, Dorian. You've given me too much evidence of that for me to just up and stop trusting you to make the tough calls about how to use what you can do.
"So yeah, I don't really love watching that stuff happen. But- so what? You keep using it to help people and you're good in my book. I don't know if that's the kind of open you wanted, but it's true. Can't speak for everyone, but if you're worried about what the others are going to say all I have to tell them is that you busted in like a hero and saved my ass. They don't have to know the real details."
Edited (editing things that don't really matter) 2021-02-23 01:34 (UTC)
Dorian stays silent through that little speech, a little surprised despite himself. He was almost certain things would have gone in one of two directions: either the Bull brushed him off again, tried to avoid speaking of Dorian's necromancy altogether, or else he would finally air all of his grievances. There would probably be many. There tended to be, as far as necromancy was concerned.
Dorian has a speech prepared, filled with a thousand different little reassurances, about the specific differences between necromancy and blood magic. It's a good speech. He's had to use it several times, to varying degrees of efficacy.
No need for it, apparently, and Dorian feels himself relaxing a little – not entirely relieved, but at least glad that this won't sour what goodwill has developed between the two of them. Dorian has a few things he'd like to say about the Bull's trust (is it entirely warranted?) or his continued insistence that Dorian is a good man (he is selfish and stubborn and far too proud, sometimes), but that's another argument entirely.
"Be sure to emphasize how impressive I was," he says, putting on his usual arrogance. "Perhaps a few comments about how fearsome and handsome I looked, silhouetted by flame. That should be sufficiently florid enough."
"Can do," the Bull says, noting that down and already planning to actually do it at whichever moment seems like it'll embarrass Dorian the most. "And you were in front of me the whole time, so if I really want it to sound accurate I'm going to have to go into detail about your, uh-" Conscious of the low light and his mask, the Bull tips his head down to make it clear he's looking assward. "-'nose'." Or maybe your legs. I haven't decided yet."
But that's a thought for later. The Bull takes a slow breath, bracing himself to walk again even if he isn't actually moving yet. "Anyway, do you know where we need to head next? Don't know how much you got to explore before you had to run back for me."
The pointed look is enough to to earn the Bull a disgusted scoff, and Dorian feels his face warm just a touch – hopefully it's less obvious in the dark, or can be blamed on his recent exertions.
Dorian gets to his feet, brushing himself off. The tremor from his hands has faded, though that exhaustion is still there – and will likely remain until he's had a good night's sleep or several.
"I didn't get a good look around," he admits, though there's a touch of guilt there, too. He was so focused on getting himself to the Bull that he hadn't had much of a mind on planning their escape, even though that responsibility should have fallen on Dorian, as well.
Better to present a solution than an apology, though: "I marked where I've been, though, and I have enough chalk that I can continue to do so indefinitely. I expect if we can find our way out of this ruin, we can locate one those ancient lifts. With luck, we can figure out our own way back to the base camp."
The Bull gives an unhappy grunt at the idea. It's the only good idea there is, though, and so he doesn't argue. The fact that they don't have that much of a direction to get out of here to even look for one of those lifts yet though, maybe that changes things a little.
"So, we want to go out and brave it now or wait and see if the darkspawn pass us by? One of them might be smart enough to figure out what that chalk on the wall means but if that happens it's going to take a while. You feel like going for it now or you want to hop up next to me, take a load off for a while?" Better to phrase it that way than to tell Dorian to take a break while he can - the Bull even hints at a suggestion that they do anything to benefit Dorian and he risks Dorian making the call to leave now just to prove he doesn't need it.
"Almost cozy in here, right?" he goes on, because it might work better to make staying about something Dorian actually expects so he might consider it. The Bull pats the stone next to him, angles his head so his wink will be obvious. "We can hang out, chat, get to know each other a little..."
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And then it's just him. Him, and the dark, and the stone on every side, and the beating of his heart. And the spirit giving him that light.
Be creepier if the thing could talk, anyway. He's probably better off.
He's been hurt worse than this, had to move quicker, without any backup to even hope for. The part of him that's saying this is just as bad as that, that this might be worse, that part of him is full of shit, and what he needs to do is move.
He moves.
Without anyone else to focus on, anybody else to think for, the world goes away. If the Bull was thinking of anything right now, he might say that makes all this easier. Worse, maybe, but easier. Easier to forget that there's anything but the stone beneath his hands, pain throbbing up his ankle and across his skin, in his muscles, the dark in front of him and the unnatural green shining off his hands and his breath quick in his ears. The sound of his leg dragging behind him. There's a rhythm you get into.
The way out takes him by surprise. He realises he's been seeing light for a while and when he looks up and sees the break in the wall it's coming from his heartbeat stutters, he leans against one wall in that way that doesn't really give him any more room but lets him pretend it does, and he breathes. And he breathes.
Dorian. Dorian is waiting for him.
He rolls onto his foot. He leans over on the wall. He stands, and looks at the pile of rubble in front of him, and feels the rest of the world starting to come back.
Rubble's up to his thigh. Nothing to do but try and climb over it.
He leans against the wall, lifts his leg. Tries to still his foot but it swings on his ankle without any input from him, and between leaning against the wall and breathing through the pain he doesn't catch the big stone knocked off the top of the pile before it's falling, the clatter echoing off the walls as it goes.
Might not be a problem. The air is dank here, wet and old, strong enough here to make the darkspawn smell hard to untangle from the rest of it. Hard to tell for certain.
The safe thing would be to turn back.
No one's here to keep it together for; when the thought makes his already tense muscles go stiff, makes his heart gamely try to go faster than it already is, he doesn't try to hide it.
He's here to find a way out, anyway. So he's going to find a way out. He finishes hopping over with his good leg, tries to make it quick enough that he can lean back on the wall, on the rubble, and not put any weight on his bad one.
Good. Next.
He still has to stoop but he can see just enough to tell that a little ways off, the room gets wider. There's a doorway there across the room. More than one, maybe. But behind this doorway there's light. The Bull hunches over against the wall and hops his way toward it.
And then, too late, he hears a noise. The smell starts getting stronger. The Bull starts thinking very quickly.
Getting to the doorway is his only chance. It's a shitty chance, but not letting them surround him might be all he has. He keeps moving, leaning on the wall with one hand, finally trying to untangle that cloth from around his horns with the other and winding it hurriedly around his face. The moment he wraps it over his mouth keeping his breathing under control is impossible but it doesn't matter, because it's done. A little optimistic, maybe, thinking he's going to live long enough to care whether he swallowed any tainted blood here, but it's done, and he's still moving-
But he isn't moving quick enough. The darkspawn are here. He shifts his posture - if he's going to die, he's going to do it at least looking like he's on his own two feet - and slings out his axe, battered but whole, grits his teeth, waits until one comes close enough that he can reach it just by pushing off with one foot and he roars, the sound filling the space and spilling outward, out the doorways and into whatever's behind. Into the open air that he's never going to see.
A moment later there's a noise of pain and he's sprawled out on his side on the ground, skin covered in dried blood and deep scrapes and gouges from the fall, side heaving fast with his breaths, hand clenched around the handle of his axe.
It's not the death he wanted. A stupid death born out of being too weak going into this compounded, probably, by a couple dumb little mistakes, downed before he can even fight and dying for nothing at all - but, hey, the silver lining: if no one's around to see it, maybe they'll tell themselves he put up a good fight. He's still, at least, got a couple more swings left to take. He isn't going to waste them.
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There's a dwarven embassy in every major city in the Tevinter Imperium, but Dorian has never had reason to step foot in one. It's not until his time with the Inquisition that Dorian has had reason to admire these underground settlements. There was an instructor at one of the many Circles Dorian attended who had a formicarium, where ants constructed delicate mazes and chambers. Dorian is reminded of it every time the Inquisitor has cause to bring him down into some all but forgotten thaig.
He's careful to keep quiet the entire time, trying to ignore the ugly stink of darkspawn, trying to ignore the sickening way his head throbs. He passes by rows of old rooms, by ancient stone furniture, by old shattered wooden carts. He passes by piles of skeletons – the former denizens of the thaig, Dorian wagers – and feels the weight of spirits pressing against the Veil.
Felix never told him what happened when he, his mother, and their family retainers had been attacked. An unbearable memory, Dorian had assumed. Felix hadn't wanted to talk about it, and Dorian now realizes with a twisting lurch that he hadn't wanted to listen. Dorian was an awful friend, he thinks. He wonders how it was that Felix could stand him, all those years.
But he remembers Felix at his worst. Remembers how pale and gaunt he had been, how weak he had become before Dorian and Alexius had managed their first small breakthrough. A combination of time magic and magical tinctures had managed to buy Felix a few more days – but that hadn't been enough for either Dorian or Alexius. Those days soon became weeks, then slowed to months, then finally became an extra year or two when they hit the limitations of their combined skills.
Neither of them mentioned the use of blood magic, but Dorian knew it was hovering distantly at the back of Alexius' mind. Nothing was ever enough.
He remembers, too, the sweat on Felix's brow, his ashen complexion, the shadows beneath his eyes and hollowing out his cheeks when he surged into Dorian's little camp on the outskirts of Redcliffe. Felix had told him of the Venatori's plans to march on Haven, rushing to stuff Dorian's pack with extra rations, extra supplies, before Dorian even had a chance to react.
Dorian nearly refused to abandon Felix a second time, but as he shouldered his pack, as he prepared himself to run, he grabbed hold of Felix's elbow, had said, "Try not to die."
"There are worse things than dying, Dorian," Felix had told him.
And now, Felix is gone. Dorian refuses to fail anyone so spectacularly ever again.
The Bull is wandering in the dark, injured and lost, and Dorian won't fail him. If Dorian dies, then the chances of the Bull's survival plummet almost exponentially. His stomach twists at the thought before he forcibly shoves it from his head.
Dorian's wandering finally brings him to a dead end, and he curses, feels frustration and real fear starting to curl up and grip his throat, making his eyes sting and water. One side is completely collapsed, and the side that remains intact is made almost impassable by the fallen debris. The lyrium lamps built into the columns that remain still glow gamely, and an idle part of Dorian wonders if this was an area of some import to have gone to such efforts to light it.
He turns to double back when he hears it – the distant crash of something heavy falling. He freezes, pressing himself into a shadowy corner and curling his hand around the wisp to conceal the light. There's no movement around him, and he allows himself a deep breath before pushing away.
It's impossible to ignore – the screech and hiss and guttural shouts of darkspawn finding prey. The abrupt familiarity of the Bull's battle cry. The clash of metal against meat and bone and more metal. The stone distorts the sound, makes it impossible to tell how close or far, but the wisp floats away from him, hovers near a heavy stone door blocked by rubble. Somehow, Dorian just knows, and terror churns in his gut, freezing his heart, before determination burns through him.
The time for stealth is done, it seems.
Which is just as well, because Dorian acts on instinct. He shoves both of his arms forward, the head of his staff aimed at the pile of stone, and shoves. The Veil reacts, a wave of force sending the stones scattering with a thunderous boom and clearing his path. He rushes forward, and when another heavy stone door blocks his way, he presses his fingertips to his temple, shoves out another telekinetic wave to force it open.
Better to be angry, and so Dorian is. Better to be focused, and so Dorian is that, too. Better than being terrified. Better than thinking about being torn apart. Better than thinking about helplessly wasting away. Better than living with the thought of surviving by selfishly abandoning and betraying the Bull.
From this close, the darkspawn stench is horrendous, trapped in by the stone around them, and Dorian concentrates on keeping his mouth shut – a helpful tip, Lieutenant Renn, thank you. They hardly seem distracted by his abrupt entrance, focused they are on their current target.
His spells come out with a near dizzying speed. First, a barrier to coat the both of them in flickering blue light. Then, a column of fire to take out the genlock attempting to take advantage of the Bull being knocked to the ground. Then, a Fade Step to close the gap between himself the Bull, and Dorian swings his staff down, slamming the focus against another genlock's head, feeling the satisfying crunch of bone.
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It's his first thought. Well- his first thought is appreciation for the obvious power in Dorian's entrance. That boom before Dorian forces his way in, the fire. But that part happens in the background of his mind, automatic. The kind of thing that doesn't really count as a thought so much as a reaction.
His second thought is about swinging his axe at the nearest genlock's knees, about the need to angle the hit so the thing falls back from Dorian, instead of toward him. "You need distance!" he shouts, not daring to look up at Dorian again because his range of vision's shitty enough right now as it is, but knowing too well what he saw. "Your mask!" Not that Dorian doesn't know he doesn't have that little piece of protection on him any more. There's no way he doesn't know. But it feels important, right now, to remind him.
Better chance that Dorian will back away if the Bull backs away too. Not something he'd do normally - the right move is still to try and bottle the darkspawn, however many or few there are, up at the doorway - but it's not like he's going to be able to help with that, not like this, so he starts pulling himself backward, glancing around to make sure the path from him to the wall is clear. If he can get his back to a wall again, that won't be nothing.
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As it stands, he only manages a grunt in response – it's all he can offer while he focuses on keeping his lips pressed tightly together. The Bull lops off a genlock's legs below the knees, and when it falls back, Dorian stabs his staff's blade through its throat, ensuring it won't remain a problem. Distance is a luxury he cannot afford at the moment – not if he means to defend the Bull. The Bull has the right idea, falling back, and Dorian takes a careful step to keep the two of them close together.
Southerners tended to be wary of mages as a rule. Summoning a bit of ice to cool a drink or a bit of fire to light a candle was liable to spur someone into screaming, "Abomination!" But if that mage happens to be a necromancer? Well, the mage would be lucky to escape unscathed. It's why Dorian uses spells from that specialization sparingly. But this situation is desperate, so Dorian doesn't hold back, like he normally might.
Dorian doesn't turn, though, only keeping the Bull in his periphery while he focuses on the room at large. He splays a hand before clenching it into a fist, gathering the energy of the recently killed. It surges through him, gives him a burst of power, and he channels it into a wall of flame that bursts to life around the two of them in a semi-circle, protecting them from the bulk of the darkspawn charging into the room while still giving the Bull room to back himself toward the wall.
He reaches across the Veil, grabbing hold of a few curious wisps and pressing them into the bodies of the dead darkspawn. The corpses rise, wreathed in the swirling, violet light of Dorian's magic, and leap through the wall of flame to attack their enemies.
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If he was watching just anyone do that, some mage he didn't know, it would be easy to say no one should have that kind of power. But when it's someone on his team, someone he's seen down and vulnerable and trying not to look like he's hurting, someone who'll boast all day but doesn't know how to take a compliment, who worries about him, who's risking something worse than death on the off chance he'll be able to get the Bull out of this - when it's Dorian, who will use his magic on stupid little things as easy as breathing and doesn't know how to leave a man behind-
It's weird. Still creepy as shit, but it's weird. How this can be up there on the list of the freaky crap he's seen, and not feel like a threat.
"Neat trick," the Bull says, the smallest hint of something unsettled running beneath his voice that could be coming from anywhere. It probably isn't, actually, only just from the one thing; it's been a really shitty day.
He starts dragging himself a little faster again.
"Out the way you got in, while they're busy? Is all this going to last that long, or are we going to have to run for it?"
We. Run. A couple words are doing a lot of work in that sentence there. The Bull can retreat, anyway, after some kind of fashion. It looks like Dorian's not going to leave him behind to run off himself, so they'll have to figure it out.
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Something wrong with one of his legs, or else the Bull would be moving more quickly. Broken knee? Broken ankle? In the light of the flame he sees the drying blood on what's exposed of the Bull's skin – not nearly dark enough for any of it to have come from the darkspawn.
"I can do this all day," he says – there's no smugness in his voice, no false bravado. It's a simple, grim fact, born of absolute resolve – an answer without fully explaining himself. The fire wall will fade, the shambling corpses will eventually become too damaged for the spirits to maintain their holds, but Dorian will do everything he can. He'll keep casting his spells, because there's little point to him if he can't.
He splays out a hand against, curling his fingers toward his palm as he draws out the energy of another darkspawn slain by his corpses. He grips his staff with both hands, swinging the focus up over his head and slamming it down. Behind the wall of flame, the spectral image of a skull appears overhead, yawning its mouth wide until it flickers out of existence, and the darkspawn shriek and scream as they scatter away, minds momentarily overtaken by Dorian's Horror spell.
The wall of fire is starting to flicker, starting to shrink, and Dorian shouts over his shoulder, "Get to the door! I'll cover you."
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And if that makes it worse, gets the whole damn ankle that much closer to being done for good - well. Dorian isn't going to leave until the Bull does. Which means they're getting out of here. Anything that happens after that has to be worth it.
He's not going to make Dorian wait, or spend so much energy on this now that it's going to mess Dorian up later. There's no time left to hesitate. So he doesn't hesitate. He goes, hunching below the ceiling, leaning forward so the bent bottom lip of the brace digs into the top of his foot with every step, breath whistling in and out between clenched teeth and then he's through the doorway, not a good idea to stop or it will be that much harder to get going again but he has to stop once he's got that semblance of cover, has to make sure that Dorian's coming behind him.
He leans back against the wall, all his weight on his right foot, chest heaving fast and teeth still clenched. "Dorian!" That will be enough to get him here. It had better be. The Bull will be ready to start moving again the moment Dorian makes it back here too - his body isn't going to like it but if he can lean on this wall and kind of hop, put as little weight as possible on that ankle, then for a while he can move. If he doesn't try to put any real weight on it then he won't collapse, and until that happens, he knows how to use the pain.
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What he wouldn't give for a lyrium potion just about now.
The genlock corpse missing its legs finally collapses, too damaged from the way its former brethren hacked at it. The spirit it contained slips away, returning to the ether, and Dorian has mind enough to offer it a quick word of thanks before he gathers more energy to himself. Another fresh corpse surrenders its energy to Dorian, and it bolsters Dorian's mana, fills him with vigor.
Just in time, as the fire wall finally burns out.
Dorian's corpses and various spells have made a decent dent in the horde, but he can hear more of the things climbing over themselves to fill in the gaps of their fallen. They're far too enthralled by the idea of fresh meat, Dorian would wager.
His fingertips touch his temple – just beneath the swelling from when he had smacked his head during the fall – and his magic rushes away from him again in another psychic blast. The closest darkspawn stumble away, some of them knocked clear off their feet. Dorian finishes the job by sweeping a hand upward, unleashing a fireball that explodes and burns several of the darkspawn alive.
The Bull shouts his name, and Dorian wreathes himself in magical energy again, letting it shoot him through the narrow gap of the doorway. Cold air swirls around him when he stops, and he spins, both hands balled into fists as he punches upward, raising a jagged wall of ice to block the door.
It's a temporary measure, at best – and even now, he can hear the darkspawn attempting to hack and claw away at it, shrieking and grunting and letting out those hideous, guttural moans. Dorian rushes to the Bull's bad side, and while he's uncertain if he can fully support the Bull's weight, he assumes any assistance is far better than none.
"We need to keep moving." Dorian is breathing heavily, ignoring the strange hollowness starting to grow in his core – a side effect of casting too much, too often. Magical exhaustion, in a way. He's learned how to work through it, and he puts those skills to use now. "There's stone I can use in the next room to block them in."
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The Bull lets out a hard breath with every other step but he sets a quick pace, and with that pace he gets there. Once they get into that next room he keeps moving, wanting to give Dorian enough room to work, and once he has the Bull leans there, takes a moment to force his breathing to slow down a little, to sit there with the pain.
"Might buy us some time," he manages, shifting his focus over after that moment to concentrate on Dorian again, gaze moving over him to look for any signs of injury, or darkspawn blood, or anything worth worrying about at all. First time he's seen Dorian since before they fell and it's hard not to compare it, to take how it felt watching Dorian standing there next to him whole and safe, wondering what expression Dorian had been wearing behind that mask, and set that next to what he's seeing now. He wonders how much everything between then and now messed his sense of time up, whether it all feels longer than it actually was. How long it's actually been. How far away the rest of their little group might be. "What are the chances the boss heard some of that? We weren't really quiet, and sound seems like it carries down here."
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Behind them, the darkspawn howl and screech, knocking down more of the ice wall, but it holds, for the most part. By the time Dorian has led the two of them into the half-collapsed hallway, only the top portion has broken enough to allow one darkspawn to poke out its head. Dorian obligingly splays his hand and flicks his wrist, freezing the creature in place.
He leaves the Bull propped up against a nearby wall, clear of the doorway, and quickly returns to his position. An arrow whizzes through the gap of the doorway, missing Dorian's cheek by mere inches, and he grits his teeth. Green energy surrounds him as he calls upon the Fade, arms thrown out to either side, and he commands the stone boulders to fully barricade the door. They obligingly roll and float into place, and once they've dropped and settled, sending out a cloud of dust, Dorian lets himself finally take a breath.
He's shaking, he realizes. Probably from the fading battle high, but also probably from the revulsion coursing through him and twisting his stomach, and also from the exertion of casting so many powerful spells in succession. His head throbs, now that he's letting himself notice, and he feels a little nauseated – but Dorian would rather chalk that up to his exhaustion and his concussion than to the possibility that he's somehow just been infected with—
Dorian's mind quickly jerks away from that train of thought.
He glances over at the Bull, and realizes the man is examining him closely.
"I'm fine," Dorian says quickly, and he manages to sound suitably convincing. He's— well, he's not, but he would wager he's in far better shape than the Bull. "If we're lucky, we'll have made enough of a racket that half the Inquisition could find us."
He hurries toward the Bull, moving to tuck himself the man's bad side again.
"We need to find someplace safe so I can tend to your wounds."
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It's something he'd be doing anyway but it helps, having something to focus on that isn't him. Someone else's problems. Maybe Dorian's feeling the same way. If someone can get something that isn't terrible out of this whole damn ankle thing, then Dorian should get to have it. They both probably need every little piece of whatever keeps them going that they can get right now.
"Yeah, and I bet you need a rest." He looks around, decides on a direction, takes a slower, bracing breath. Leaning mostly against the wall and a little against Dorian, the Bull starts moving. He can add some more 'not terrible' to this, he thinks. Not a lot, but for the moment, they've got time. They're alive. The mood might not get a whole lot better, but that doesn't mean the Bull can't do a better job now than he did crawling through that hallway earlier.
Dorian's here, not just a voice that was only half as strong as his heart pounding in his ears but here, close enough to see, to feel. The ceiling is too low, still, but the room is open. Not great, maybe. But better. So the Bull can do better.
"After doing all that, I mean." He pauses, takes a breath against the pain that sounds louder trapped inside the mask. Keeps going. "Hot damn, what a show!" Another pause, shorter, quieter, and after he takes that second for himself he makes his voice kind of smug and teasing. "Sometimes I almost think you actually could take me on, if you really wanted to."
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"I could absolutely take you on," he replies, just the right amount of haughty, "and it would be your own fault for underestimating me if I found reason enough to best you."
The Bull is warm at his side, and more importantly alive. Perhaps the Bull had downplayed the seriousness of his injuries before, but Dorian is gratified, at least, that he hadn't been completely lying. The man is mostly intact, and while Dorian can't mend all of his hurts – he has only rudimentary knowledge of healing spells, after all – he can at least do a bit to patch things up.
He hesitates for a bit before he slowly ventures, "I'm surprised you were impressed."
There's a touch of caution to his voice. Dorian is hardly ashamed of his skills and would be the first to applaud himself, but he knows the Bull's relationship with magic is fraught, at best. And according to some people – mostly plebeians with no understanding of the nuances of magic – necromancy isn't that much better than blood magic.
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"What?" the Bull asks, like he can't at least make a guess. There's another one of those pauses again while the Bull acknowledges the pain; right now it's a greedy thing trying to steal all his attention, and if he hands that attention out in moments then he can direct the rest of it where he really needs to. "You blow an old dwarven door right off its hinges, start raining fire everywhere, and take out as many darkspawn on your own as an entire team of warriors all just to keep my butt out of the fire and I'm going to, what? Start critiquing your form?"
He looks over at Dorian again. Yeah the Bull didn't mention one particular part of of Dorian's whole rescue in that little recounting there, but it's kind of hard to make every single part of what Dorian did back there sound cool. Trying wouldn't sound natural, because he couldn't mean it. Might ruin his message. And the message itself is the true part anyway, not how excited he did or didn't get over every single detail. "What else did you think I was going to be?"
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But it would take a fool to notice that the Bull is making a rather glaring omission, and Dorian lets out a breath. Of course it bothered the Bull. It bothers nearly everyone outside of Nevarra, and even some people from Nevarra. Cassandra had given him a wide berth the first time he had placed a wisp into a corpse, only to later probe with questions to discover what type of person he was, whether he was the type to bind wisps to corpses and have them shambling after him like some sort of retainer. Even some mages in Tevinter find necromancy distasteful.
He frowns at the Bull's obvious pulse of pain, grip tightening on the Bull's arm before Dorian nudges them toward what might have once been a storage room. He had passed by it earlier while exploring the place – evidenced by the line of chalk he left by the doorway – and he guides the Bull in. There's a stone table – tall and sturdy enough to support a man of Bull's size – and Dorian guides him toward it.
"I save it for emergencies," he explains quietly. The Bull may be avoiding the topic, and as simple as it would be for Dorian to go along with him, Dorian won't. He's not ashamed of his magic, but in this case, he understands the worry that comes along with it – and his responsibility as a practitioner to assuage those worries. "I don't make a habit of animating skeletons and having them carry me about in a palanquin – though perhaps I should."
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He feels his breath moving in harsh gusts through his nose, leans on Dorian a little more than he wants to and his bad leg a lot more than he should, and tries to drag the conversation to the top of his thoughts, think about that while the rest of him does the things it needs to. Dorian isn't really playing along; for him that means things are serious, that the topic is important enough for him to draw that kind of attention to it. Which means the Bull's answer wasn't the right one, that he must have miscalculated.
Better, then, to ask him straight out. The Bull makes it to the table, turns, hops up. The pain is still what it is, but at least he doesn't have to put any weight on the thing until they have to move again.
"Like I said," he goes on, now that the part of his mind that had been keeping him moving is free up enough to help him focus on it. "What else did you think I was going to do? Get pissed off at you? Go back and report you to the templars?"
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The wisps still float around them, but Dorian adds a few more to their number to drift around the ceiling. It's hardly daylight in here, but it's far easier to see by.
"You might lecture me," he replies, though the expression on his face says he would prefer to avoid that. He looks the Bull over with a critical eye, now that there's time and light for it. "Tell me of the dangers of tampering with such strange forces. Or reprimand me for my cavalier and disrespectful treatment of the dead."
By his tone of voice, Dorian has had this conversation several times over.
"Is the ankle the worst of it?" he asks, clipped and business-like to conceal his worry. "Or is there any other damage I'm not seeing?"
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"Pretty sure that's it," he decides. "Everything else is just the surface stuff." The gouges, the scrapes covering most of him - they're going to hurt for a while, and itch like shit once they start healing, but they look worse than they are. The leg's the only real injury there. Considering how far he fell, every place inside his body that isn't screaming at him right now can probably be traced back to Dorian.
Kind of weird to think about - how the Bull owes everything to Dorian right now a handful of times over, and Dorian still expects the Bull to give him shit for it. It's a good way to spend this little break of theirs, trying to convince Dorian otherwise. It would be nice if he could do it.
He goes through the points, one at a time. "If I start lecturing you on magic, start checking my food for weird mushrooms. I know you too well to pull that kind of crap. You don't need me to start telling you how dangerous all those forces are. And considering the kind of things you just took out? I'm pretty sure you didn't disrespect them enough."
He watches Dorian a moment. "That really the kind of stuff you think I've got to say to you?"
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"You wouldn't have been the first," he replies, voice and gaze a little distant as he examines the injury. "I mostly hear it from Vivienne. Cassandra, sometimes. She enjoys telling me cautionary tales about her uncle, a Mortalitasi. She says the smell of embalming fluid makes her want to retch. Sera isn't much of a fan, either, for obvious reasons, and neither is Cole, though he's not quite so direct with his criticisms, as you might imagine. I found myself apologizing to him, nevertheless."
The boy had seemed so distressed at the time.
With the injury properly examined, he draws another wisp across the Veil, channeling its energies to partially mend some of the damage.
"This may be painful," he warns, though he's already set to work. "This will be a temporary measure a best. A healer with legitimate training will need to see to this."
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"I don't know," he says, watching Dorian's hands. Getting healed by magic isn't something he's a huge fan of either, even though sometimes he couldn't fight the way he does without it. That's not a discomfort he thinks too hard about, these days. Not since the earlier days in Orlais with the Bleeders. Some things you just have to get used to. Maybe it's the topic that's making him more aware of it now, making him try harder to sort it all out and put it into words.
"Vivienne just doesn't like not being the biggest, baddest thing around, probably just trying to feel like she's still in control. The rest of them- eh, none of them are here, so I guess it doesn't matter. If you really want me to join that club you're going to have to start pulling that crap on someone who isn't trying to kill you, and I don't think that's going to happen. You don't feel like the type. Besides, you think you think I don't know how hard you've been working to keep me in one piece? I'm not that much of an asshole. I am actually impressed. You pulled some pretty impressive shit. I might not be that excited about all of it, but I'm alive to get over it. Not going to forget that that's all down to you just because you made a call about what needed to get done."
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Dorian spends a few moments focusing, on trying not to do more damage in his attempts to fix things. After a few minutes, he rocks back, the glow fading from his hands as he settles them in his lap.
"That's as much as I'm comfortable mending." Admittedly, he thinks, it wasn't much, but it should be enough to attempt limping on, though not much else. "If I try anything more, I'm bound to get something wrong, and some healer might harangue me for making things worse."
For a second, he falls silent, before he lets out a breath. "You're certain? I know you're— not comfortable with more esoteric types of magic." An understatement, admittedly, but sometimes Dorian can manage a bit of tact, when he cares to. "If you've anything to say, now's the time to do it, while it's still fresh. I'd rather we have everything out in the open."
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But they're not talking about magic in general. That might be a good sign, that maybe Dorian's not as worried about whether the Bull's just uncomfortable around him altogether any more, that they're talking about this one kind of magic now instead. Doesn't necessarily mean anything, but maybe they're making progress.
Dalish never seemed to worry this much about this stuff. But then, it hasn't really come up. The mage thing is an open secret, yeah, but she doesn't wear it on her sleeve the same way Dorian does.
If it is a problem for her, she hasn't said anything about it. The Bull would have been able to tell, though. Wouldn't he? Weird thought, that one. He hasn't really wondered that before.
"You want it out in the open?" He shrugs. Maybe Dorian isn't really going to feel settled until he hears at least a little something negative. Hopefully he doesn't need the Bull to sound annoyed about it, though. If this is going to go the way the Bull wants it to, he's got to sound casual. Which isn't really hard. This is something he's got worked out with himself already and it works for him, even if Dorian hasn't quite caught up. "Sure. That stuff gives me the creeps. If you can put some 'spirit' into a dead body, if you can do all that once they're dead, how close is that to doing it while they're still alive? You or, you know, anyone else who can do any of that crap. That's what I think about when I see it. But like I said: I trust you. Say someone I'm fighting with likes to use a... I don't know, beehive on a stick to beat all his enemies. I'm going to feel a little weird about seeing it, but as long as the bees only go after the bad guys I'm going to rest easy.
"Besides, all the stuff we've gone through, even just in the past month - I get that I didn't give you as much reason as you gave me to think this way but in that uh, that temple, even just then, I got a lot of reasons to trust you. And a few more after that. A lot more of them today. I decide to throw all that away just because you can do something I don't like, I'm going to have to turn in my ben-hassrath card. You're a good guy, Dorian. You've given me too much evidence of that for me to just up and stop trusting you to make the tough calls about how to use what you can do.
"So yeah, I don't really love watching that stuff happen. But- so what? You keep using it to help people and you're good in my book. I don't know if that's the kind of open you wanted, but it's true. Can't speak for everyone, but if you're worried about what the others are going to say all I have to tell them is that you busted in like a hero and saved my ass. They don't have to know the real details."
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Dorian has a speech prepared, filled with a thousand different little reassurances, about the specific differences between necromancy and blood magic. It's a good speech. He's had to use it several times, to varying degrees of efficacy.
No need for it, apparently, and Dorian feels himself relaxing a little – not entirely relieved, but at least glad that this won't sour what goodwill has developed between the two of them. Dorian has a few things he'd like to say about the Bull's trust (is it entirely warranted?) or his continued insistence that Dorian is a good man (he is selfish and stubborn and far too proud, sometimes), but that's another argument entirely.
"Be sure to emphasize how impressive I was," he says, putting on his usual arrogance. "Perhaps a few comments about how fearsome and handsome I looked, silhouetted by flame. That should be sufficiently florid enough."
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But that's a thought for later. The Bull takes a slow breath, bracing himself to walk again even if he isn't actually moving yet. "Anyway, do you know where we need to head next? Don't know how much you got to explore before you had to run back for me."
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Dorian gets to his feet, brushing himself off. The tremor from his hands has faded, though that exhaustion is still there – and will likely remain until he's had a good night's sleep or several.
"I didn't get a good look around," he admits, though there's a touch of guilt there, too. He was so focused on getting himself to the Bull that he hadn't had much of a mind on planning their escape, even though that responsibility should have fallen on Dorian, as well.
Better to present a solution than an apology, though: "I marked where I've been, though, and I have enough chalk that I can continue to do so indefinitely. I expect if we can find our way out of this ruin, we can locate one those ancient lifts. With luck, we can figure out our own way back to the base camp."
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"So, we want to go out and brave it now or wait and see if the darkspawn pass us by? One of them might be smart enough to figure out what that chalk on the wall means but if that happens it's going to take a while. You feel like going for it now or you want to hop up next to me, take a load off for a while?" Better to phrase it that way than to tell Dorian to take a break while he can - the Bull even hints at a suggestion that they do anything to benefit Dorian and he risks Dorian making the call to leave now just to prove he doesn't need it.
"Almost cozy in here, right?" he goes on, because it might work better to make staying about something Dorian actually expects so he might consider it. The Bull pats the stone next to him, angles his head so his wink will be obvious. "We can hang out, chat, get to know each other a little..."
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