My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  Torches were impossible in the torrent of rain thundering through the skies, so Niala lit up a few crystals and tossed them to the various parties. She moved to hand one to Alistair, but chucked it at Reiss instead. The river itself crested a few houses away, but even at this distance and by the darkness, Alistair could see the waves rippling over the banks and heading towards all the dalish worked for. If they didn't pull this off it could all be done in by nature itself.

  Niala directed the first of her hunters up the path to the broken dam, before slipping over to Alistair, "Sire, perhaps it is best if you remain indoors, in case of..."

  "You need hands, we'll worry about the costs of cleaning the royal hems later," he tried to wrap his cloak tighter to his skin, but the wind kept yanking it behind as if trying to choke him to death. Just what he needed on top of assassins, the weather itself working to kill him.

  For a moment the First shared a look with his bodyguard, before sighing in acquiescence and leading the charge up the path. What had once been a polite and relaxing walk in the woods became utter treachery. Every three steps, Alistair's foot sunk into mud, the water pooling up over top his boot and sloshing deep through the leather. Rain made the field of vision winnow down to as far as you could wave your hand, which meant everyone had to cling arm to arm to keep from losing anyone. And under it all was the ever pressing cold of the south, far more bitter even by late spring than what they got even in the mountains. It bit and hissed against exposed skin, wetted by rain, and turning it all to ice. He'd be lucky if he ever warmed up again.

  Scrambling even tighter together the group finally reached the summit to find a cluster of the crystals lit up as hunters hauled up stones from a pile beside. "We lost a lot, First Niala," one shouted, her entire bottom half coated in mud. A river gushed out of the hole in the middle of the dam, rocks scattered down the incline and all of it threatening to buckle at a moment's notice. That would send nearly the entire lake down upon the village wiping out Maker only knew how many.

  She nodded solemnly, "I can try and hold the water back, fill in the hole as fast as possible." Every elf picked up a stone and scurried towards the bank, ready to perform their duty. Folding her hands together once, Niala ripped apart the veil. The hairs across Alistair's body lifted from the metallic twang mixing into the air as a blue force launched out of the mage's hand to wrap around the lake. A whistle burst from his lungs at the power on display, the woman easily holding in place gallons upon gallons of angry water against the natural pull of the world. Glancing over, Alistair noticed the prickling of sweat building on her brow and amended maybe not so easily.

  Niala grunted out a, "Now," and every elf scurried across the soaking wet rocks, attempting to slot back in a fresh stone to make up for the missing ones.

  Alistair reached over to pick up a rock, when Reiss grabbed onto his hands. Confused, he caught her sight by the light of the crystal in her hands. "Ser," she shook her head slowly, "that is not wise for you. By any measure of the word."

  "There aren't a lot of options," he pointed out. Water bulged against the magical barrier, a small fist of it trying to work its way free. Grunting, Niala drug it back with all her force. He knew mages, knew the power of ones sometimes beyond their limits. If they didn't finish this quick, it was going to break and then they were back at the beginning.

  Reiss tugged herself closer to him and dropped the lighted crystal in his blisteringly cold fingers, "Please."

  Grumbling, but accepting that she was probably right, he released his grip on the rock and stumbled back by Niala. He couldn't offer her any assistance, templars being trained to do the exact opposite with mages, but he could at least hold a light up near her face so she could see the work better. While he was banished to being the light keeper, Reiss snatched up a rock and followed the rest of the the dalish. She moved as certainly as she had when running across the roof -- paying no heed to the slippery footing or the slope, but Alistair found himself holding his breath silently praying she'd be okay. It'd be a long way down if one of them tripped.

  Brick by brick, the elves moved quickly, far faster than seemed possible, the group not bickering or wasting time grandstanding. There was a job and if they failed, they all lost. Slowly, the hole clogged up until only a slither of water trickled through it. Reiss staggered to a halt beside the bank, her hair was matted against her head from the constant spray, the metal of her armor glinting against the haunting blue of the spell. She turned back, trying to figure out what was next when one of the elves dropped to his knees and with a handful of mud, attempted to seal in any major cracks. Not even pausing, she dug fist first into the muck and followed suit. Alistair shifted on his toes while the woman patted her hands along the cracks of a dam that could break at any seconds, her face right next to the oncoming danger. Would she even have a chance to scream before the water smothered her?

  Not helping, Alistair. Think of happy dry things. Far far away from the torrential downpour of the Maker dropping a damn ocean upon them. He glanced down at Niala and found her with her eyes screwed up tight. A dribble of blood pooled down her mouth from her teeth biting into her tongue as she struggled against the pressure of nature fighting against her mana dump. What I wouldn't give for a vial of lyrium right now.

  Her eyes flailing open, Niala only had time to shout, "Watch out!" when her magic faltered and a bubble of water punched through the rocks, sending them scattering down the dry waterfall. Every elf scattered towards opposite sides of the banks, but their first was strong and she reenforced her own barrier, dragging the uncooperative water back to its bed.

  "Please, go quickly," she whispered. There was no time for the others to mourn the loss of their work, more rocks passed hand to hand to try and refill the gap.

  Feet scrabbling in the mud turned Alistair and his glowing stone away from Niala to highlight an older elf. He looked panic stricken, his eyes a deathly white by the glow of magic in the air. "First, please, you must help."

  "We are trying, Belan," she hissed, her eyes screwed up tight.

  The man glanced over at the piles of his brethren stumbling across each other to fix the dam, when he turned back to the woman holding everything at bay. "Not that, First. It's my son. Please!" he shrieked, clinging to her robes.

  Niala's eyes shot open and Alistair flinched, whipping his head back to the lake, but the water remained in place. "Iohn? What of him?"

  "The river, it's taken him. I can't...please, only screams and," he yanked Niala back and forth causing the barrier to weave. "You have to help me!"

  Alistair tried to politely pick the distraught man off the woman, which earned the shemlan a wrathful glare he'd been expecting. "I can help you. Show me where your son is," he said quickly, the man nodding wildly.

  "Thank you, thank you, thank you," he cried, to both, already scampering away down the hill.

  Wiping the water out of his face, Alistair turned to follow when a voice called out in the darkness, "Alistair!" He started at hearing his name without any fancy titles before it and turned to spot Reiss glaring at him. "What are you doing?"

  "Saving one person, you keep saving everyone else. I'll do my best to not die!" he shouted, trying to sound cheery.

  "You damn well better not," she hollered back, accepting her fate as Reiss returned to spackling in mud before the entire thing collapsed killing them all.

  The old man twisted quickly back down the hill, barely pausing while the far heavier human stumbled against the worn away path that was nothing but a muddy pit. Alistair risked a glance up at the skies, wishing that the clouds would part for a moment, only to have a fat wet raindrop plop onto his forehead and drip down into an eye. "Thanks," he groaned to himself, trying to shake off the hanging sense of doom all about this. Turning back, the dalish man shouted something in elvhen, but Alistair couldn't make it out over the rains whomping into the churned earth and the river rapids washing back and forth like a vengeful sea from the winds.

  "Coming," he
tried, hoping that'd suffice while suckering his boot out of the mud and half hopping towards the old man's side. "Where's your boy? Trapped in a closet or hiding under a bed?" He threw out a few theories and some of Spud's preferred 'I don't want to go to bed and I mean it' spots.

  With a finger trembling like a branch in this storm, the old man extended out towards the river. He couldn't be serious. Alistair yanked up the light crystal higher, but it couldn't pierce further than a few feet against the impenetrable shadow blanketing the area. "How do you...?" he began when a scream broke above the white rushing of the waves. High pitched and gargling, it sounded like a child that was terrified beyond measure and reaching a point of exhaustion.

  "Sweet Maker," Alistair ran towards the bank's edge, river water washing across his shoes as he raised up as high on his toes as he could manage. By the narrowest band of the light's spray he caught the whispered edge of a lump clinging to something in the middle of the river. The water parted around it like the single boulder in the middle of a battlefield. He held his breath until a head, almost ghostly white, swung up and screamed into the night.

  "Right, okay," how the hell was he going to pull this off? He moved to dip a foot into the river, but the current yanked him off balance. Before Alistair could plummet into the flooded river and need rescuing himself, the old man's hands grabbed onto his upper arm steadying him. Turning to offer thanks, Alistair spotted a line of rope sitting beside a boat. An idea percolated in his brain and he asked the man if there was a bow around.

  Belan gave him a slow scowl, but as his son shrieked again, he dashed off while Alistair knotted the rope around a tree at the edge of the river. Thank the Maker the thing was long, probably planned for an anchor. When the man returned with the bow, Alistair plucked up an arrow and began to tie a knot around it. "What are you doing?" Belan shrieked, his son's terror echoing in the father. Blessed Andraste, how he knew that feeling.

  "This'll work, I think," Alistair plucked up the weighted arrow and tried to slot it into the Dalish bow. "I've never seen it done but I read about it...in a serial, written by a dwarf." Straightening his back, he locked his left elbow and slowly tugged the drawstring back. The arrow's tip slotted into place above his thumb for guidance as he realized he had no idea what to shoot at. Darkness filled the other side of the bank. He could keep shooting blindly while having to fish the damn arrow back every time, but that could take forever.

  The father seemed aware of this, and plucking up a lantern he ran up to the bank and heaved it across the river with all his might. Alistair followed the arc of the light, his eyes honing in on the spark as it fought against the rain and for a brief second illuminated the bark of a tree before falling extinguished to the muddy ground. His fingers let the arrow fly, the rope weighting it terribly so the course slipped downward fast. Please be enough draw to reach the end and stick in the damn tree! Tenderly picking up the slack rope, Alistair tugged towards the other side and felt it stick tight into something.

  Okay, good, that was the easy part of this. Tossing the bow back at the man, Alistair unclasped his cloak and without any ceremony waded into the river. The father began to chase after, but he whipped around, "Stay back, hold the rope in case...in case this all goes badly." Which it probably will because it was your dumb idea.

  The river pounded against his body, trying to knock his legs out from under him, but Alistair kept the rope wrapped around his fist while the other held the crystal aloft. It worked pretty well until he crossed the first barge and his body plummeted into the icy water. Flailing from the force, Alistair's feet slammed away from out under him and he snapped with the rope.

  Maker's jangling coin purse! Pain seared up his shoulder but damn it all, he kept a grip to the rope. Watching the water thundering over the crystal still jammed in his hand, he accepted there was only one way to get to the kid while still being able to see. Shaking his head and trying to will away the cold biting up into his bones, Alistair opened his mouth and crammed the light crystal inside. It barely fit and tasted of a salty iron, but a beam of illumination lit up from his mouth like he was a walking light house.

  Straining every muscle in his upper body, Alistair fought against the current to lash onto the rope with this second hand and slowly, painstakingly crawled to the boy. The cries began to slip down to whimpers, the child uncertain what was coming for him and the man with a crystal for a mouth unable to answer. He bobbed and weaved through the river, the depths slipping away until Alistair's feet had no hope of touching the bottom. Twisting his head, the light skirted across a log bursting out of the river and there attached to it was a small hand.

  The boy was still there. Craning his head back, Alistair managed to get the light to land upon the child's eyes, his body awash in a haunted red glow as he blinked against it, but those hands didn't dare break away from his only salvation. "I'm here to rescue you," Alistair tried to say, but it came out like a strangled gargle of a goose mid yawn. The boy cowered closer to the log, more than likely terrified of the river monster come to eat his soul.

  Andraste's flaming buttresses, Alistair bit off the strain burning across his arms, his shoulders screaming in rage as he fought the force of the river and tried to tug himself closer. When he butted into the log, he froze as a creaking sound erupted from the drowned wood. So close he could see the child, debris from the river splattered against his face and hair, he tried to cower into the log. Ever so gently, Alistair reached a hand towards him. The fingers lightly grazed the kid's head as he knocked a stick off, the without the grip, Alistair's body slammed into the log.

  "Oh Maker," he groaned, jagged edges of driftwood digging into the back of his ribs. Tipping forward, he forgot to bite down on the crystal and their only light source plummeted out of his jaws and skipped down the river. Looking like a haunted fish it darted through and fro down the stream until striking a series of boulder and cracking in half. Alistair hissed at that and doubled his grip on the rope.

  "Come on, get on my shoulders," he instructed to the kid but he was frozen in terror. "It's like a piggy back. You like that game, yes?"

  "Idunno," the kid moaned, his face buried into his waterlogged salvation. Maker only knew how long he could remain clinging to it and if that thing could even survive this level of flooding.

  "Here," Alistair tried to rise up onto the log, but another crack echoed from deeper into the depths. Right, not smart. Reaching out blindly, he picked up the kid's fingers and worked them to his shoulder. At first they hung there limply, but when he reached for the second, the boy dug down tight. Alistair almost yelped from the pinch, but he shouldn't discourage it. "Are you on?"

  The boy didn't answer, only nodded his head hard, the chin digging into Alistair's shoulder. "Okay, hold on tight. We're going to the shore."

  Gritting every part of him that could be gritted and girded, Alistair inched along the rope. The boy's hands slipped around his shoulders to do the far too familiar choke hold that his daughter perfected. It wasn't so bad until the current tugged on the much smaller body, collapsing Alistair's windpipe. He'd have to pause and tug the boy's hands away just to get in a breath before resuming. All the while, the boy whimpered beside his ear, the cry continuous.

  "I fell into a river once," Alistair began to talk. The current slopped filthy water into his mouth, some of it he swallowed, others went up his nose, but he kept talking, that fatherly instinct needing to soothe the scared boy. "I was six and I thought I saw a fish."

  He reached forward, prepared to grab tightly to the rope, when the section behind him finally snapped free. Oh shit! Alistair wrapped a hand behind himself around the boy while clinging knuckle white to the rope. The current whipped them back and forth, both man and child tossed into a whirlpool. Unable to see, Alistair had no idea when the water would wash into his throat or down his nose -- the blackness strangling him without reason or remorse.

  Their only chance was if he kept tugging forward on the only bit of rope still attached to th
e tree. And if that one broke as well, he was going to join with that light crystal wherever it went in the void. He tried to tell the boy to hang on, but water gushed into his mouth. Having to trust that the dalish child was smart enough to know how to survive, Alistair let go of him.

  Thank you blessed Andraste! The heavy weight clinging to him didn't wash away with the rapids. Reaching as far as he could, Alistair renewed his tug, but it was even slower going as they fought directly against the current. Beside his ear, the whimpering doubled in terror.

  "That fish I saw, I wanted it to be a mermaid. Do you know what mermaids are?"

  The boy buried his face in his neck, not saying a word aside from the terror whimpers. Taking that as a yes, Alistair continued his tale while inching forward, "Well, I'd never been in a river before, not even a lake or pond. Baths were pretty iffy at that age too. So..." Bubbles snorted out of his mouth as he drank more of the water. Whipping his head back and forth like a dog with a bee in its ear, the cold wrapped around his dying limbs. Its icy ache dug nails up every joint, crushing the nerve and calling for him to give in.

  "Without knowing a damn thing about swimming, I leap feet first into the river," Alistair said, not about to give up. He reached a hand forward, but the grip slipped off the frozen, waterlogged rope. This sent his face plummeting into the river, sucking down enough water and fish poop he'd probably grow gills. Beside him the child howled, his own face cresting near the waves. Alistair moved to comfort him as best he could, when something tugged on the rope.

  The movement threw him off, almost sending him tumbling backwards. Quickly, Alistair knotted both hands around the rope as the tugging increased. Jerky at first, it grew into a smooth, slow motion tugging him closer to the shoreline. A lantern beat against the darkness, illuminating four or five shadows clustered beside the tree. They were saved!