My Warden (COMPLETED)

Blood

Blood splattered across her robes, clots clumping up her hair, the sand buffeting through crimson puddles and coagulating into a sticky mass on the stones. Scarlett dripped down the ruins, rivulets meandering through the carvings into the floors from numerous throats sliced open - the bodies left in a heap on the side. He cared nothing for their sacrifice, but the wardens should have. They should have... There was so much blood, too much. Lana's fists strangled her staff, wringing her fingers against the wood while she glared at the form limping away in the distance. Every inch of her body screamed for her to give chase, to rip apart the veil itself and drag him back to the void from where he slithered out. The dark part of her, the one she only tapped into when there was no other choice, demanded she make it slow. The rest of her agreed with it.

Hawke clapped a hand upon her shoulder. Normally, Lana would have bowed from the force, but her body was rigid and unbending. Her eyes hunted across the wardens, all dead, all bound to a demon by something far worse stalking their lands. She knew anger, she'd often butted heads with it in the personified form from the fade. This wasn't anger stirring inside of her, it ran deeper through her marrow than anger could ever reach. They were going to pay for this blood.

"Where do you think he's going?" Hawke asked. She yanked her greatsword out of the impaled spine of a warden and inspected it. "Damn blood mages. Even when you think it's not blood mages, it's always them bastards."

"Adamant," Lana watched the sands blanketing the sky from Erimond's wake. She flipped around and honed in on the Inquisitor, "He's heading to Adamant, an ancient Grey Warden fortress."

The Inquisitor was ragged, the mage's blood slicking back his hair as he rotated his daggers in bruised wrists. He panted beside a broken statue while Dorian tried to will a slip of energy into him. For a brief moment, the elf accepted his help but then he rose away, trying to force on the command role. "What are the Grey Wardens thinking? Binding themselves to demons? Sacrificing their own?"

Lana felt every eye in the party land upon her, even Hawke's, but she didn't care what they thought of her, of wardens. She needed to kill Erimond. She was going to kill him. "Hawke and I can scout out Adamant. Make certain that's where he's headed."

"We can?" her cousin asked, batting at the back of her head. Lana glowered at her, and - for the first time since they met - Hawke gulped from the mage's power, "I mean we can, of course."

The Inquisitor looked about to argue, but even he bowed his head, acquiescing to the vengeance inside of her. Lana flexed her fingers once more, drawing as much energy as she dared back into her limbs. The blood remained untouched, drying to a sickening brown in the desert sun. She was many things, but she'd never become a malifecarum, never become one of them. "Come on," she said, slapping her hand against Hawke's armor. "Let's go."

"Ah, Warden," the Inquisitor spoke softly, still gulping in air from the fight or perhaps from Erimond knotting up his anchor. "Did you know any of the people here?"

Lana's strides stumbled and she turned back to the bodies both mutilated from their weapons, as well as the ones drained to feed the demons. They were too young for this; too young to have death dangled above their heads, death whispered in their ears, and the only hope given to free them was a suicide run to save the world.

"Yes," she admitted, noting the ones she'd cursed to this life. Without elaborating, she swept up Hawke, slid down the backside of the ritual tower, and raced after Erimond. His tracks were easy to follow, even for the warrior and mage stumbling through the ankle deep sand. The man didn't care that they were following, he thought he was stronger than they were, believed himself untouchable. She'd prove him wrong. Lana stalked across the dunes, her jaw screwed tight, the burn of the sun not reaching her frozen heart. Yes, she'd known some of the people split open like a water skin, their life's juices poured across the ground. She'd been the one to recruit them, the one to put the Calling in their head, the reason they were manipulated into destroying their own. And he'd murdered them all for his own master's glory. Visions of how she'd slit Erimond from nape to navel kept her focused as sand poured into her boots trying to drag her down into the earth with it.