David Gaider - The Calling

Are we really planning on fighting this thing?

Genevieve appeared out of the haze and smoke and charged beside him, her sword raised high. They didn’t exchange looks and merely ran together toward the dragon’s flank as it was preoccupied with Utha. Duncan gulped as they got closer. The creature loomed high overhead, far larger than it had looked from a distance. Far faster, too. It was long and lanky and quick. How in Andraste’s name did it live down here?

Dragons were supposed to have been extinct, hunted into oblivion—or at least they were thought to have been until one was spotted over the Frostbacks at the beginning of the Dragon Age. Was this that one? Was this where dragons came when they weren’t flying about and razing the countryside?

Genevieve plunged her sword deep into the dragon’s hide. Duncan did the same with his daggers, the silverite easily cutting through the scales. Bright dragon blood spurted from the wounds. His blades didn’t cut anywhere near as deeply as the Commander’s, but hopefully they were enough to cause the beast some damage.

Apparently they were. The dragon reared up again, roaring thunderously and bringing bits of stone plummeting down from the cavern’s ceiling. As it spun around, Genevieve’s sword yanked out of the creature’s hide, coated red with blood. Duncan’s daggers were almost torn from his grip and he had to pull hard to free them. The dragon opened its maw wide, and for a moment there was the sound of a great intake of breath.

“Look out!” Genevieve shouted.

She leaped on Duncan and pushed him to the ground, burying him under her heavy armor. The air was knocked out of him, and for a moment he felt confused. A moment later he realized why she’d done it: The dragon was breathing flame.

The blast of heat hit them first. Duncan cried out, but found the air forcibly ripped from his lungs. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, and then the fire washed over them. At the same time, however, something else struck them. A wave of freezing cold from the other direction, something that made Genevieve’s armor frost up and the air suddenly fill with boiling steam. The heat was searing and painful, but shockingly they survived. The flames were gone.

Genevieve pulled herself off of him, and he rolled aside quickly. He saw then the reason for their escape: Fiona had appeared, her staff held high over her head and flaring brilliant blue streams of power from the stone at its tip. She looked radiant, surrounded by a corona of magic so cold Duncan could feel it from where he lay.

The dragon could feel it, too. It bellowed in fury and launched itself at the mage, flapping its wings hard enough that Duncan had to struggle not to be blown away once again. Three arrows streaked toward the dragon’s head, and one of them hit home in its eye. The creature shrieked and spasmed in midjump, and it crashed down next to Fiona and slid along the ground.

One of its wings nearly hit the elf, but she ignored it and instead collected her will. She channeled power through her staff, and the icy aura around her suddenly burst out in all directions. Instantly the entire cavern was filled with a freezing storm. Wind and snow blew in all directions, and the temperature dropped so rapidly that Duncan could see his breath.

It figures she would bring the damned winter down here, too , he grumbled. The dragon reacted wildly to the spell. It writhed in place, obviously in agony and beating its wings uselessly against the ground as it tried to escape from its millions of painful icy tormentors.

Maric appeared next to Fiona and charged the dragon as it spun, slashing with his enchanted longsword, which bit deep into the creature’s hide. Another indignant shriek, and this time the dragon pushed itself to its feet and launched itself high up into the cavern. With several beats of its great wings it retreated to the shadowed recesses above them.

Genevieve stood unsteadily, covering her face against the blizzard. “Grey Wardens, to me! Regroup!” Her voice was almost lost to the howling winds, but the others heeded her call even so and ran toward her.

Duncan remained crouched low to the ground, trying to see through all the blowing snow to discern whether the dragon was about to swoop back down on them again. Perhaps it was gone for good? Perhaps they delivered it enough of a bloody nose that it had retreated to lick its wounds?

“Is it going to come back?” Fiona shouted as she arrived, her thoughts echoing Duncan’s.

Kell dropped down from the boulder, Hafter barking angrily. “We should get back to the Deep Roads! Quickly, while there’s still time!”

“No!” Genevieve growled. “Our difficulty will be no less there!”

“Than with a dragon? Are you mad?”

Julien and Nicolas approached, an injured Utha limping not far behind, and they looked surprised as they saw their commander cross the distance toward the hunter and grab the front of his leathers in her gauntlets. Her face was contorted with fury, yet he met her gaze levelly, staring at her with his pale eyes. Hafter growled menacingly at Genevieve’s feet.

“We are not leaving,” she insisted. “We fight. We will win.”

“We should be facing darkspawn—”

“We should be finding my brother!” she snarled. “That is our mission! We find a way through this place, back to Ortan thaig! Or we die trying!” She turned a glare to each of the Grey Wardens in turn, challenging them to contradict her. None of them looked away, but none of them spoke, either. When those blue eyes fixed on Duncan, he shrank away a little. She really meant them to fight the dragon if it came back.

“Then what is your plan?” Maric demanded. He stood beside Fiona now, his runed longsword glowing faintly in the blowing snow. “Do you even have one?” he continued, his tone harshly accusing.

Genevieve’s face was steel. She had no time to respond, however, as another cry sounded from the upper reaches of the cavern. The dragon was returning.

“Move!” she cried.

They scattered. Duncan ran as fast as his legs would take him, covering his face to protect it against the icy winds of Fiona’s spell. He could sense the great mass of the dragon overhead, and for a moment he was certain that it was about to come crashing down on top of him, or worse, swoop down and snatch him off the ground in its talons like a hawk would a rabbit.

The creature landed somewhere behind him, however, and uttered another ear-splitting roar. He stumbled and half fell behind a column of rock. Lava swam in a narrow channel nearby, the blowing snow causing great waves of hissing steam to rise from its surface.

Getting his legs underneath him, Duncan turned and chanced a look around the edge of the column. He could definitely make out the dragon through the blizzard, but only as an extremely large and indistinct shape. It was clearly spinning around, its long neck darting down to snap at something below it, though who it was he wasn’t sure.

Swallowing hard, he gathered his courage and ran out again. The high dragon came clearly into view as he approached, all muscle and grace and covered in glossy black scales. He might even have called it beautiful had it not been so dangerous.

The dragon bellowed again, its long tail lashing wildly behind it. Its wings beat madly and added to the flurry of the winds. The sound of its roar amplified in the cavern to the point where it was painful to hear. Duncan winced and tried to keep running forward despite the ringing in his ears.

The creature was having difficulty dealing with all the combatants. From what Duncan could see, the others had surrounded it on several sides. Every time the dragon attempted to concentrate on a single opponent, the others would move in to strike. So, too, did Kell’s continual barrage of arrows keep distracting it from its intended target. He saw Utha dancing about near its legs, and Genevieve stabbing deep into its flank. Its black scales were heavily streaked with blood, presumably its own.