The Iron Dragon

Chapter 30. Fight!

We were all ready for this fight and you could see that in each of us. With Freya in the lead and us close behind her we went out into the open field to face our opponents. Unlike those who were facing us, you couldn't feel a bit of nervousness in our ranks, we were calm and collected, which was more than you could say about our opponents. We were dangerous and it was exactly this danger that we radiated. I had often had to deal with red Templars and the people of the Inquisition certainly had and therefore it did not surprise me that we radiated that deadly calmness and composure that caused riots to break out in the ranks of our enemies. We would destroy them. We would wipe them all out and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. One could almost feel sorry if our enemies were not these infested creatures.

"Try not to die, and if you do, do it in style, by taking a few more enemies with you". Even if the whole thing sounded a little strange, I could hear agreement in the group.

The first one who rushed past me had been the iron bull. For the fact that this man carried so much muscle mass with him, he was surprisingly fast, definitely something our enemy had not expected. When I saw who the bull was running towards, I had to refrain from laughing, because he was after the biggest one. At full speed he ran towards the colossus, where he raised his club arm with a slow and heavy movement and then dropped it onto the bull. The Qunari warrior dodged with a quick movement and ran further to a large lead. It became more and more clear to me what he was going to do, the closer he came to the lead and the more I couldn't help but watch him eagerly. Since a colossus had an almost gigantic body size, it was quite difficult to get to certain parts of its body, if you could call it a body. The best way to aim at this creature was to aim at its head right from the beginning. Easier said than done, because it rose far into the air. So to get at it you had to think of something and I had the feeling as if the bull had done exactly that. He ran to the ledge and then up this one. On the last few centimetres he had left before he would have fallen down, he jumped in a high arc and with a lot of momentum towards the head of the creature. It didn't surprise me a bit that he achieved exactly what he wanted to achieve. Anyone who approached a thing so purposefully knew how to solve it best. The axe, which he had lifted by flight, was now in the head of the colossus, which with a loud crash backwards gave a lot and no more signs of life.

The bull pulled his weapon out of the colossus' head with complete composure and placed it over his shoulder. The way he stood there, with his big gun on the body of a colossus, he looked quite attractive, I couldn't deny that for the life of me, and I honestly didn't want to. I had to admit to myself that I had a little weakness for these horned creatures but I am sure everyone present had noticed that. My eyes, which after several attempts finally separated from the Qunari, wandered to the dwarf to see where he was. As I had expected, Varric was hard at work shooting his bolts with an elegance that I found more than impressive, between the eyes of our enemies, which proved to be very successful. His bolts flew quickly through the air and seemed to eliminate any target with perfect accuracy. I noticed that there were subtle differences between some of his arrows. Some had a dark liquid at the tip which I recognized as poison and others still find fire in flight. Some others were raked and I could imagine that it must have been terrible pain to be hit by one of these, let alone remove it. I watched curiously as he loaded an arrow into his crossbow that I had never seen before and so I watched him to see what was hiding behind the arrow. Varric aimed high into the sky and then shot it off. Probably each of us had asked himself at that moment where he had shot and who he wanted to hit with it but after a few seconds it was clear. The arrow, which was still gaining height, suddenly opened at the sides and seemed to shoot something back, which no one but me could see. Hundreds of tiny little needles shining at the tip, as if they too were soaked in poison, shot back towards the ground at a very high speed and made sure that a large shadow opened up over our enemy. Since most of them had not paid attention to what was happening and only became aware of it when the shadow spread over them, it was no wonder that many of them did not manage to even move in the direction of safe ground. The rain of poisoned needles hit our enemies hard and unrestrained and many went down almost immediately. My gaze wandered to Varric who met with his own there. With a gesture as if I pulled an imaginary hat in front of him I made it clear to him that I was very impressed by his abilities. Varric grinned and clichédly bowed to me to show me that he felt honoured by my compliment. I liked this dwarf.

Cassandra also showed some of herself and I gladly admitted that I was also impressed by her abilities. She was not as strong as the iron bull, but she was faster and more elegant when fighting. For a human, there was a disturbing power behind her blows, which told me that she must have had some experience on the battlefield. I watched as a tall and rather stocky red Templar ran towards her at a pace that was not entirely without its own. I wondered if I should come to her aid but after a few seconds she showed me that this was clearly not necessary. Despite the fact that he practically threw himself at her with a powerful swing, she stopped like a field in the surf. With some admiration I noticed that she had not even moved a few centimeters backwards, but was still standing at the point where the Templar had started his attack. Of course you could see that the Templar didn't like this at all and he showed this by trying to push Cassandra further back with all his body weight, but this definitely didn't seem to work. Lady Pethagast did not move a millimeter and withstood the raging red Templar. I noticed that she was just waiting for him to exert himself enough so that she could start a counter attack and as much as he moved, this seemed to happen soon. She crouched down a little and gathered some strength in her legs before she leaped up and not only knocked her enemy away with a good and strong blow of her shield but also tore the ground from under her feet. The Templar fell to the ground with a loud clatter of his remaining armour, making him an easy victim for the warrior's last sword stroke. Now from this side no Help was needet.

As my gaze wandered to Freya, I could see her standing there in all her calm, watching the whole thing. I had also expected that we would all be able to deal with these enemies quite quickly, but I was surprised that she decided to watch first, instead of going into battle with them. Especially when I saw some Templars approaching from different sides and were about to surround them. Her gaze continued to follow the actions of her comrades but something about her eyes told me that she was well aware of her situation and was coping quite well. I didn't have the feeling that she wanted someone to come to her aid and so I kept my distance, of course, but without letting her out of my sight in case she suddenly needed my help. The Templars, who obviously didn't seem to be surprised by the situation at all, which clearly showed me the yawning emptiness that must be in their heads, continued to walk slowly towards her.

Nothing happened. The red Templars came closer and closer to her and yet she just stood there calmly and didn't even notice them. I noticed that our enemies were restless, for they too were aware that something could not be right with this situation, and they apparently did not like it. Meanwhile, the Templars were standing in a circle around her, only a few metres away from her. Their weapons were drawn and they were ready for a fight, if Freya would start it at some point. I heard her take a deep breath and then slowly look at the people around her. What made me even more curious about this situation was that the inquisitor wore a smile on his lips which would definitely not have been the case for another person in this situation but she smiled and let her enemies get as close as possible to her. You always had to be careful with magicians, because these people still had some ace up their sleeves that they could bring out at any time, and I had the feeling that Freya had planned something similar.

Her arm shot forward and I could see electric lightning moving around her hand so fast you'd think they were alive. The lightning moved from her arm directly to the person standing closest to her and this was, of course, one of the Templars. With a painful scream he went down and even after he collapsed his body was still twitching from the strong electric charge. What the other Templars did not expect was that a lightning bolt would usually travel in several directions and therefore the Templar did not intend to hit only one Templar. As in a chain reaction, the lightning struck in a zigzag movement already into the next opponent, who immediately went down and from there straight to the next one. All the Templars that had stood around Freya were hit by the same lightning within seconds and went roasted towards the ground. After the lightning had taken them all away, it returned to Freya's hand, in which it finally disappeared, and suddenly there was nothing left of the handful of Templars that had been standing around them a moment ago. That's what I once called a very effective spell.

She looked over at me and our eyes met. Hers pugnaciously and mine admiringly. It was really impressive how strong the people from the Inquisition were and I had met only a few of them until now. I could imagine that where these people came from there must be others of similar strength. This organization probably really had a real chance against this creature who wanted to become a god and that filled me with hope. I now knew how the people who were on the side of the inquisition felt and I had to say that it was a really good feeling. A glance to the side told me that we would have to deal with yet another red Templar but I would make sure that this would soon no longer be the case. After all, I wanted to contribute something to this fight.