Nathaniel had frozen in place on the top stair, peering down into the excavation suspiciously.
"I fell down a flight of stairs once," he said. His hand tightly gripped the flimsy railing. "They looked much like this particular set of stairs."
"Are you going to join the Order of Stairs, then?" Velanna crossed her arms, hovering behind him. If he didn't start walking soon, she was going to shove him down herself. "Given your history of allying with things that wrong you."
Nathaniel looked back at her in utter disbelief. "I don't understand you, Velanna. Do you hate me because my father was a monster, or because I failed to avenge him?"
"I hate you because I want you to climb down the damned stairs already," she said. "Some of us have a job to do."
Nathaniel turned away, his jaw working, breathing heavily and unsteadily through his nose. Swallowing whatever retort he wanted to make, he instead stepped to the side, giving Velanna a bow and a flourish and offering her an open path down the rickety wooden stairway.
"As my lady commands," he said, a mockery of his previous manners. Velanna grunted, storming past him. Creators, spare her the misery of days trapped in a darkspawn-infested tunnel with this infuriating shemlen fool.
The Commander and Oghren were already at the landing, Anders lagging a bit behind the group. "Looks like this section of the Deep Roads fell in," Oghren said, craning his short neck around to take in the massive structure half-collapsed around them. "Must've been built too close to the surface." There were thick tree roots bisecting sections of cracked stone. The remnants of the excavators who had been unfortunate enough to stumble upon this particular site were picked over and replaced with markers of darkspawn raiding parties; skulls crowned the tips of spears set into the ground, old blood staining abandoned weapons kicked into forgotten corners.
The sun was high in the sky, but this far down into the pit, the sun could not reach. The further they went down the tunnel, the darker it became. Velanna set the crystal embedded in her staff alight, and a moment later, Anders did the same, painting the high walls of the shattered structure in eerie greens and blues. A glint of light caught something in the corner of Velanna's eye, and when she turned, a pair of glittering white discs were blinking in and out in the shadow of a boulder. A burbling trill emitted from it.
"Deepstalkers," Tabris warned, stopping where she stood, and a whole troop of the creatures burst from their hiding places as if summoned.
They had fought a number of these vile little creatures in the mines, but familiarity didn't make them any more pleasant to look at. They went down relatively easily if one could reach them, but they were quick and agile, with their strange, long necks. They spat and hissed as they darted between the Wardens, dodging blade and bow. A well-aimed blast from Anders set a few aflame, and they careened wildly, screaming as they burned. Their distraction allowed the Commander and Oghren to dispatch them quickly. Velanna turned nature against the others; surrounded by winding tree roots, it was easy to draw blade-like thorns up from the earth. The creatures who escaped the piercing trap were badly wounded, their clawed feet bleeding. Nathaniel picked the last of these off with two well-placed arrows into their horrible fanged mouths.
"This close to the surface..." Tabris looked around at the carnage thoughtfully. "This is a real problem. We'll have to seal this entrance off."
"It's not gonna be as easy as the one back home in the basement," Oghren said. "This is just a cave-in, not a proper entrance. You're gonna need a lot of good masons to make a seal strong enough."
"Wonderful," Tabris said. "I'll have to ask Voldrik if he can spare any people. The Vigil needs those repairs, but this… Too many people will be in danger if the darkspawn have such easy access to the surface."
"Mages could probably help shape the stone closed," Anders said. "If that bastard Irving would give any of them permission." It was the most like himself he'd sounded in days.
"Well, I may have to write the Circle anyway," Tabris said pointedly. Anders sighed, rolling his eyes.
As they drew further down the stone hallway, Velanna started to feel something she couldn't quite define. It pricked at the edge of her consciousness, making her grit her teeth and clench her fists. It was like a wave of anxiety, but somehow outside of her, pushing in. Her blood thrummed. If she concentrated on it, she could almost hear it…
The others around her were just as tense, she noticed. That was when she realized what it was.
Darkspawn.
Tabris caught all of their attention, nodding her head down a turn in the pathway. She held up a hand, fingers splayed-- five of them.
The sound of armored feet pounding on stone broke the quiet, drawing closer and closer . They turned the corner, weapons at the ready.
The figure barrelling toward them could have been mistaken for a darkspawn, at first glance. It was small and stout, with horns winding from its head, and fully armored, not unlike darkspawn Velanna had been faced with before. But before the figure could get far, it was intercepted by a massive, helmed hurlock, which knocked it prone and began to drag it by the foot back down into the pit. The person, a dwarf, grunted and struggled, kicking free, scrambling back to retrieve the axe knocked from their grip when they fell, turning to face the darkspawn alone and planting their feet on the ground, unyielding.
They weren't alone, though. The Commander let out a hair-raising roar as she rushed in, blades drawn, signaling their presence. The dwarf hardly spared them a glance, but fell into their rhythm easily, rallied by the unexpected backup.
The darkspawn provided a much bigger challenge than the deepstalkers had, but they didn't have a mage, and Velanna counted that as a blessing. The Commander distracted the leader, drawing its attention to her and allowing their unexpected ally to slide in and hamstring it. From behind it, an archer was drawing to fire on them; Velanna didn't give it the chance, shooting a fireball that caught it and two of its scattering fellows in its blast. Oghren swept through, aiming for the knees, giving them easier targets to aim for.
At last, the hurlock leader went down, its head cleaved from its body by the Commander in one great pass of her curved blade. The sounds of battle ceased, the lingering adrenaline cooling as they caught their breath.
The dwarf sank to the floor, exhausted, tugging off the horned helmet to reveal extensive tattoos and short black hair pulled back tightly into three little tails. Velanna might have mistaken her for darkspawn even without the helmet-- black bars of ink carved through her features, skull-like in design and in effect. Her unmarked skin was very pale, and when her eyes blinked open from within the dark ink surrounding them, they were startlingly blue. She was breathing heavily, and favoring her side, resting with a hand on the hilt of her small axe.
"Well," she breathed, "that was… close. For a moment there, I thought I was really about to join the Legion of the Dead."
"Are you all right?" Tabris asked, wiping darkspawn gore from her swords before sheathing them.
"I might have cracked a rib," the dwarf responded, "but it's hard to be sure. Everything hurts." If she was injured, it was hard to tell under all of the ink and armor, but she certainly looked on the verge of collapse. Anders stepped in to kneel beside her, peering at her closely.
"Could I have a look?"
"No, no, I'm fine. I just need to catch my breath."
"I'm a healer. I've got maaagic fingers," he said, and gave them a little wiggle to emphasize his point. The dwarf laughed for a moment, then winced at a sudden stab of pain.
"It's not much of a defensible position," Tabris said. "But we can rest for a few moments."
"I should probably go back," the dwarf said, "as foolish as that sounds… see if there's anything I can do."
Tabris shook her head, setting her pack on the ground. "You're in no shape to keep fighting."
"Can you get your breastplate off?" Anders asked. "It'll be easier to fix if I'm sure I'm not setting it back crooked."
"I… I guess so," she said, but when she twisted back to reach the buckles, she recoiled in pain again. "Agh, nugfucking-- ugh."
"What's your name?"
"Sigrun," she grunted, resting on her palms and allowing Anders to try to free her from her armor himself.
"You can call me Anders," he said. "Now how do you get these blasted things undone?"
"Here, let me do it," Velanna grunted, going to her knees next to the two of them, starting to feel around the breastplate for the buckles and unlatching them with impatient fingers. The dwarf's eyes widened when Velanna came closer to her.
"An elf! You're the first elf I've ever met. Do you feel honored?"
Velanna scoffed. "Why would I feel honored?"
"Your actions will influence my opinion of your race. Forever," she whispered ominously. Anders snickered, giving Sigrun a teasing wince.
"Oh. Thank you," she grumbled, feeling the last buckle give. "I needed more anxiety." Diplomatic outreach had never been a talent of hers.
"Glad to help," Sigrun chirped. Under her armor, her clothes were sweat-stained and worn, but there was no evidence of blood, and with her permission, Anders rolled up her undershirt to reveal a wide, violently purple bruise spreading across her thick midsection. Strangely, she seemed much more preoccupied with staring at Velanna, who began to sweat under the scrutiny.
"Your ears are so pointy," she said, "like an animal. Do they make it easier for you to hear?"
Velanna faltered. "Wh-- Are you-- are you saying my ears are big?"
Sigrun seemed to realize she had misstepped. "Not… excessively so…"
"You think they're 'clownish', don't you?" The anxiety Velanna had managed to forget came surging back. Her ears burned hot, and that made her even more uncomfortably aware of them.
"You know, now that you mention it…"
"I knew it! Don't talk to me." She stood abruptly, stalking away, letting Anders finish whatever he was doing alone. She passed Nathaniel, and avoided looking at him as hard as she possibly could, opting to face away from the group and pretend to sort through her gear rather than look at any of them.
"Word for the wise," Anders said. "Don't ask Velanna about her ears. Or elves. Or magic. Or anything, really." Velanna turned to yell a protest that would probably only confirm his point, but the Commander stepped in first.
"That's enough," she said, while Anders passed a faintly glowing hand over Sigrun's bruised ribs. "Sigrun, right? Warden-Commander Seriah Tabris."
"Wardens? My condolences," Sigrun said with a twist of her mouth.
"You're from the Legion of the Dead?"
Sigrun nodded. "There's something going on down there. I think the darkspawn are breeding an army. The Legion went to investigate, but Kal'Hirol proved too much for us. It was a massacre. And now I… I'm the only one left."
"Darkspawn army?" The Commander's jaw tightened. "Eradicating those is my speciality."
"That's what we thought," Sigrun said. Her voice had gone light, and her expression a little foggy. Anders seemed deep in concentration as he bled magic into Sigrun's side. "'Oh, we'll just run in there, eradicate the darkspawn and be back in time for supper.' Well… whoops." Sigrun sighed, then winced at the movement. Anders took her shoulder to steady her before returning to his work. "The darkspawn have changed; they're smart now. They destroyed the Legion. I saw them taking some of the women, and I wasn't about to stick around for that."
Something cold and dark settled uneasily in the pit of Velanna's stomach. What did that mean?
Tabris looked grim, statue-still as she took in the dwarf's warning. Anders drew away his hands, the glow fading. What remained of Sigrun's injury was now a yellowed patch of skin spanning her ribs. She tucked her undershirt back in and twisted experimentally, testing her reach. Her face brightened, and she looked at Anders with unrestrained glee before she pushed herself to her feet and reached for her breastplate, which she replaced with practiced efficiency.
"If you mean to go back, let us fight with you," said the Commander. "I've fought beside Legion forces before. They went to great lengths to help us surfacers in return. I've a lot of respect for them. The least I can do is help you avenge them."
Sigrun tested her arm, swinging her hand axe in a small arc.
"Better?" Anders asked.
"Much! My thanks. That's a pretty handy trick you've got there, friend. And the first mage I've met, too!" Sigrun found Velanna isolating herself in the back of the group and a wide grin split open the dark lines of her geometric skull tattoos. "See, that's what a good first impression looks like."
Velanna flushed angrily, unable to restrain an indignant squawk. Was she to be trapped in a darkspawn cave with a whole party of comedians?
"Convenient, to have run into all of you when I did," Sigrun said. "The ancestors must have had a hand in this." She held her weapons at the ready, nodding for the Wardens to follow. "I'll show you where Kal'Hirol is. Safety in numbers, yes?"
Tabris nodded. "Glad to have you along."
"Excellent. With your help, destroying this nest is no longer impossible, merely… improbable!"
"Oh, an optimist then," said Anders.
Downward the tunnel wound, down, and down, and down, further than Velanna had ever willing gone before. The Architect had incapacitated them before drawing them deep into his underground chambers. Now she was increasingly aware of the amount of earth and stone that hung over their heads. If she had thought the Vigil confining, she felt now as if she were walking willingly into her own burial plot.
"You're the first Wardens I've met in person," Sigrun said, chattering happily as they marched, in complete defiance of the circumstances. "Though you hear all sorts of things about Wardens, in the Legion."
"It's a real day of firsts for you," Anders said.
"You're right! See, there's a bright side to every darkspawn massacre."
Velanna was suddenly concerned that perhaps Sigrun's rib wasn't all she'd cracked.
"They say you folks only come down here to die," Sigrun added, as breezily as if she were discussing the weather, or what she'd had for breakfast. "Which I guess makes you basically the same as the Legion, only we're already dead!"
"Already dead?" Nathaniel's expression resembled his usual stern look, but Velanna could see the growing frown on his brow even in the dim light. She felt briefly vindicated, that she was not alone in her bafflement, then immediately disgusted with herself for having agreed with Nathaniel about anything at all.
"Legionnaires are declared dead the second they join," Oghren said. "Same outcome as when anyone else goes on a Deep Roads camping trip, they just skip to the punchline."
"You and I spent a month in the Deep Roads together, and here we both are," said the Commander.
"Not sure how you survived the smell," Anders said.
"You get used to that darkspawn funk," Sigrun said. "Like mildew, but much more… aggressive."
"I meant him," Anders said, and gestured to Oghren, who obliged him by belching horrifically.
Velanna began to say, "I suppose it's too much to hope the rest of the walk might be a silent one." Before the last word left her lips, the tunnel opened up into a wide, sprawling cavern. Light burst through the ceiling through some manner of fissure, cold and blue-tinged. A great underground body of water slashed through the stone, catching the light and reflecting it back on the stone formations that dripped from the ceiling like so much wax. Clusters of unfamiliar fungi gathered in the damp. And rising up among the natural formations were great geometric structures, once proud and sturdy, left to crumble with time and neglect. The darkspawn had left their mark here, as well, just as they had on the surface, and their blight-stained markers jutted from ground on the outcropping where they stood.
"I don't know much about Kal'Hirol, except what the others from the Legion told me," said Sigrun, quietly compared to her earlier attempts to fill the silence. She looked out over the stone cavern almost reverently. "It used to be important, a center of learning for the smith caste. When the fortress was lost, a lot of what the smiths had learned was lost with it. They've never built anything quite like Kal'Hirol since."
Velanna, unfortunately, was unable to see whatever their new dwarven friend saw in the vast pile of crumbling stone walls. What sections of the once-proud underground city survived were blunt and blocky, inelegant and unfamiliar to her eye. The scale of it was about all she could find to compliment, though it was now a shadow of its former glory. The walls and archways lurched upward into the stone ceiling, far taller than she might have expected for dwellings built by a people of shorter stature than humans or elves.
The staircases and walkways had long ago been reduced to rubble, and the path leading down into the ancient city was little more than uneven stretches of dusty stone littered with broken bricks and boulders. Their guide let out a gasp and dashed ahead as they drew closer, and Velanna realized with a start that what she had taken for a pile of stone and darkspawn refuse was actually a person, armor-clad and writhing on the ground in pain. Sigrun fell to her knees, taking the dwarf's shoulders and cradling the badly bloodied form.
"It's Jukka," she said. "He's hurt. Bad."
The closer Velanna drew, the easier it was to see the blackened blood that flecked at the man's lips, which looked dreadfully blue in comparison. Tattoos very much like Sigrun's, but visibly faded and much older by Velanna's estimation, slashed across the man's face; underneath, the skin was sallow. His fists clawed and clutched at his own gut, his armor crushed like a sheaf of parchment. Velanna had seen the darkspawn corruption firsthand. This man would not survive his injuries, let alone with his mind intact. Jukka's eyes were red-rimmed and unnaturally bright when they blinked open at the sound of his fellow Legionnaire's voice.
"...Sigrun?" His voice was choked and breathless, forced out of his throat with as much effort as he could spare.
"Yes, it's me," Sigrun said at a whisper, and carefully dabbed black spittle from his beard. "Be still and try not to talk…"
"Is there anything we can do?" Anders looked about ready to try to heal the man, but the Commander stopped him with a look and a shake of her head.
"No," the man croaked, even as Sigrun tried to wipe the sweat and grime from his brow. "I feel my death upon me. And it is a sweet release…"
"No, I have bandages!" Sigrun pulled back to rummage in the pouches at her belt. "I can help—"
"You must listen! The… the broodmothers. They are breeding." Next to her, Velanna saw the Commander's shoulder draw back, her jaw tighten. The hair on Velanna's neck rose, prickling at her clothes. "I saw an… an army. You… you must… you must stop them. But… but beware the Children. They are abominations, even among darkspawn—" Jukka's eyes rolled, wide and senseless, and his breath rattled horribly in his lungs as he tried to force the words out.
"What, what children? Whose children?"
"Forgive me—" Jukka jerked and writhed on the ground, his chest seizing, and just as suddenly, he went still. Sigrun sat utterly silent for a moment that stretched on horribly, the air settling quiet and heavy around her.
"Ancestors look kindly on you, brother," she whispered. She reached out a hand to touch the back of his head where it lay, face down in a growing pool of blighted blood, then thought better of it and drew back, pushing herself steadily to her feet. When she turned back to the Wardens, her face was resolute, only a trace of grief left to be seen. "We have to finish what the Legion started. Those broodmothers need to be destroyed."
"Forgive me if this is a foolish question, but have you encountered one before?" asked the Commander. Velanna looked between Tabris and Sigrun, taking in their apparent fear. The meaning of the dying man's words settled in like cold rainwater into cracks in a roof. She couldn't yet grasp the full depth of their situation, but the suggestion left her unsettled.
Sigrun nodded. "Just once. Only one. But it… it wasn't an experience I ever wanted to repeat."
Tabris sighed. "Oghren and I as well. Just one, and the battle was… We very narrowly escaped alive. Your friend's warning…"
"Multiple broodmothers. And unless we can intervene... more in the making."
"Pardon the interruption," Anders said, clearing his throat. "If you don't mind explaining what exactly a broodmother is?"
Velanna swallowed. She had an idea, and didn't relish having it confirmed.
"How do you think darkspawn are made, boy?" Oghren looked uncharacteristically tense himself.
"I guess it's too much to hope that it involves a loving union between a mummy and daddy darkspawn?"
"Let's just say there's a reason you don't let darkspawn take the women alive," said Oghren. "Unless you're a crazier than a sack of cats, like my ex-wife."
"Andraste's blood," Nathaniel swore, his face contorting in disgust.
"They infect them," Tabris said, her eyes unfocused and distant, remembering. "Force-feed them tainted flesh, until they become… something else entirely, something mindless. It's… it's unspeakable. And just one can birth dozens of darkspawn at a time. That's how they're created."
Velanna choked back a wave of nausea.
"Commander, you— If Seranni—"
"No. I don't believe they took your sister for that purpose, Velanna," Tabris said quietly. Velanna's heartbeat pounded in her ears.
"Would you have told me if you did?"
The line between Tabris's thick brows deepened. "Yes. I promise you, if I honestly thought that was a possibility, I would have warned you. She's retained her mind, and by all appearances, her autonomy. And the… the physical change...." Tabris closed her eyes, and looked for a moment like she was as ill as Velanna felt. "Please, believe me, you would know. You would not recognize her. She would not be your sister any longer."
"Broodmothers are usually well-protected. Even the younger darkspawn are hard to fight through in large enough numbers. If there's more than one broodmother here, there's no telling how many we'll have to fight our way through," said Sigrun. "We were already overwhelmed by the numbers before, but we can't just let them keep multiplying. We have to stop them. Whatever the cost. I hear that's a credo you Wardens swear by."
Tabris drew her hand over her face, rubbing at her jaw in thought. "Yes. But we're going to be smart about this. This is not a suicide mission, not if I have anything to say about it. If it looks like a losing battle, we retreat until we can muster up reinforcements." Tabris looked back at the group of them, steel in her eyes. "If it comes to it, at least one of us will need to make it back to the surface to make sure they can mount a defense. But I don't plan on letting them take a single one of you. Not if I can help it. 'In Death, Sacrifice' is a suggestion, not a rule. Got it?"
"'Save your own skin' is a battle cry I can get behind," said Anders.
"I vote we keep Anders alive so he can keep healing us," said Oghren. "Nobody dies, everybody wins."
"As long as we're all agreed that the darkspawn need to die…" Sigrun adjusted her belt and stopped for one last tight-lipped glance at Jukka's prone body. She sighed decisively. "Okay. Let's move."
"Sigrun," Nathaniel said, solemn and quiet, as the party began to move again. "I know dwarves don't burn their dead as we do, but isn't there anything we can do to honor your friend's passing? It seems… cruel to leave him."
Once again, Velanna was loath to admit he was right, as she felt a pang of sympathy for Sigrun. Velanna had come upon her clanmates already long dead. She had not been forced to witness the agony of their deaths. It had taken long hours and more mana spent than she had to spare to dig their graves, and when they had finally found their rest, Velanna had been too spent to cry or grieve. She slept as the dead slept, and when she woke, she woke reborn, with vengeance in her heart.
But Sigrun had already set her path, it seemed, and she shook her head without a backwards glance. "There's no time. Sometimes we have the luxury, but in the Legion, we know most of us won't die clean and painless." She looked back with a wry twist to her mouth. "We're already dead. Our souls are already committed to the Stone. Our bodies just need some time to catch up."
Velanna shivered faintly. It reminded her too much of the end that waited for her when her borrowed time was up. The Taint had already claimed her life— it merely remained to be seen how soon the end would come.
Now that she new the worst form that end could take, she vowed that she would never allow herself to be taken alive.
The streets of the abandoned dwarven city were not as abandoned as they appeared— darkspawn scouts and straggling parties of warriors lurked in the shadows of every tomblike building. They began to fall into a rhythm, and Velanna found that the more she fought them, the more she came to understand the patterns of behavior one could expect from the previously unknowably monstrous creatures.
Through it all was the unsettling feeling of being watched. Velanna wasn't certain how much of that could be attributed to her growing ability to sense their foes and how much was simple paranoia. Every time a shadow passed out of the corner of Velanna's eye, she had readied a ball of flame, certain they were about to be attacked. Only once out of every handful of times had she been right. Conserving mana would be a difficulty if this kept up.
Sigrun was a welcome addition to their ranks. She was built like a cannonball, but she moved through the unfamiliar terrain more like a weasel through the underbrush, ducking and dodging, charging darkspawn and deepstalker alike with deadly accuracy. She and Oghren moved comfortably down here in the Deep, and while the Commander didn't seem to like it any more than Velanna did, she at least knew what one ought to expect. Velanna didn't think she'd seen a single green thing down here, and it left her off-balance. That was a full skill set of hers rendered utterly useless. She would have to turn her elemental focus toward stone to survive.
Their path alongside the underground river drew them closer and closer to what looked like the walls of some great underground castle, or perhaps the wall to a larger city, like the ones Velanna had seen the humans construct. A gate lead towards a shattered chain-drawn bridge that had crashed to the ground before it, and a troop of darkspawn lead by a towering hurlock crowded around it.
Velanna was startled by a terrifying roar, not from one of their enemies as she had initially assumed, but from Oghren, who charged more quickly than she had ever seen him move directly into the swarm, barrelling into the leader and scattering its thralls to the sides. His axe came around in a wide arc, taking limbs from the unluckiest of the bunch. Sigrun and Tabris were not far behind him, controlling the crowd and protecting each other’s backs. From their distance, Velanna, Anders, and Nathaniel followed their example, ranged spells and well-aimed arrows taking care of the darkspawn stragglers and those who managed to scramble away. But even as the pace of the battle slowed with the darkspawn's dwindling numbers, Oghren was a growling terror, his axe blackened with darkspawn gore.
When the leader fell at last with one great crack of Oghren's axe into its skull, it was only the difficulty of pulling it free again that seemed to calm Oghren's blind fury. The Commander barked his name as he attempted to dislodge his weapon, shoulders heaving and breath coming just this side of too fast.
"Oghren," she called again. "Oghren, it's done!"
Oghren blinked slowly, like coming out of an open-eyed sleep. "Right. Right. Thanks, Commander," he said, suddenly weary, and with one last great tug, pulled his axe from the hurlock's ruined skull. The Commander slapped him heavily on the shoulder, and they shared a brief look before she nodded, apparently satisfied that all was well.
Velanna watched Oghren a little more closely, after that.
The gate led them to an entryway with a grand staircase leading to the most intact structure they'd seen yet, a great door into what Velanna assumed was Kal'Hirol proper. The ground here was filthy; it was impossible to take a step without finding your boots at least half an inch deep in darkspawn refuse. The inner walls of the gate were lined with abandoned weapons and totems decorated with bones— darkspawn, dwarven, or otherwise, Velanna could not be certain. Sigrun surveyed the area, lowering her weapons and sighing wearily.
"The Legion got this far with no trouble," she said. "We got careless, and complacent, and stormed the main entrance, up those stairs. It was a disaster. The darkspawn were waiting. They turned the thaig's old defenses against us."
"Traps," the Commander said.
"And more. Ancient dwarven ingenuity, used by the very monsters it was intended to kill. We need to learn from the Legion's mistake. Avoid the main door."
"Is there another way inside?" Nathaniel had retrieved a handful of arrows from their slain targets, and was wiping the black blood from them with a scrap of cloth. Velanna hoped he had a pack full of rags. He would almost certainly need them, if he intended to keep his quiver clean.
"Most of the old dwarven fortresses had hidden side entrances. I bet this one does too," Sigrun said, with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "We just need to find it."
"Where do you recommend we start?" The Commander regarded the gruesome surroundings with what appeared to Velanna to be stern resignation. Sigrun came to her side and gestured towards the side walls, which were constructed with great V-shaped arches and in which torches guttered and glowed with faint orange light.
"I've seen hidden mechanisms tucked into areas like these before. If we feel our way along—" Sigrun stopped, her grip tightening on her hand-axe and battered little dagger. In the shadows, low to the ground, something black and slick gleamed.
An ear-splitting shriek echoed in the stone courtyard, and from the dark recesses of some came skittering a swarm of creatures the likes of which Velanna had never seen. They were the size of dogs, with shelled insectoid bodies segmented like woodlice. There were perhaps a dozen of them, and Velanna's stomach dropped to see that each of them had, in place of pincers or some similarly appropriate mouth, what looked very much like a person's face, pale and bloated and corpse-like.
The party recoiled almost as one. Anders hopped back to positon himself behind Oghren and lobbed a fireball into the swarm reflexively. Velanna followed his lead, summoning a ball of flame of her own and launching it towards the twisted creatures. Two of them were propelled into the air, landing on their backs with a sick crunch, their numerous short legs flailing in the air as they burned. Some others had caught fire but seemed undeterred, trailing smoke as they charged onward.
Even the Deep Roads veterans among them seemed startled. The Commander hesitated a moment before she charged in to meet the creatures with her blades drawn, their two dwarven companions trailing just behind her. A broad sweep of Oghren's axe cleaved one of the creatures in two, the front and back halves continuing to wriggle and writhe for a few stomach-turning seconds before they curled in on themselves, dead. The Commander and Sigrun, meanwhile, seemed to be aiming for their heads. One good stab to sever the head, or at least crush the skull, seemed to dispatch them more quickly than trying to cut through the thick black chitin of their backs. Nathaniel managed to slow a few of them with an arrow through the eye socket. Velanna dispatched these with an ice spell that stopped them in their tracks, their legs shattering beneath them. No one spoke until the last of them had fallen absolutely still.
"I have never seen such darkspawn before," Sigrun said, kicking at the limp corpse at her feet. A closer inspection revealed that it was indeed a darkspawn's face that burst incongruently from the insect body.
"Why would we suddenly be seeing new forms of darkspawn? This isn't even a Blight." Anders seemed unwilling to step any closer to the dead creatures than necessary. Velanna couldn't disagree with him. She turned to Commander Tabris, searching her face for a sign that she was familiar with the things, that she knew what they ought to expect from them.
"Do these creatures change? Do they evolve?"
Tabris did not appear to have any more answers than they did. "That Legionnaire warned us— he called them 'Children'. Between the Architect, and the intelligent darkspawn… They may have learned how to create new forms of themselves." She seemed disquieted, her face lined with worry.
"No time to waste, then," said Sigrun, already moving towards the far wall. Tabris nodded, following her lead.
"Stay together, and keep an eye out. Don't allow yourselves to be separated from the group," she said.
Sigrun was evidently an old hand at deciphering abandoned dwarven technology. After some examination, she located the trick door they were looking for in one of the side panels that recessed into the wall. The lever was hidden in the mouth of a carving, which Velanna could not make sense of. Was it a dragon? Some other ancient and forgotten creature? Whatever the case, at its behest, a stone panel sank into the floor, opening a path into an entirely new section of courtyard. Sigrun poked her head through, looking around sharply, before she nodded back at the rest of them to indicate that it was safe to pass. Velanna wondered what the purpose of such mechanisms might have been in the thaig's heyday.
"This'll work perfectly," Sigrun giggled, pleased with herself. "The darkspawn will never see us coming!" Such deviousness in such small packages, these dwarves had.
"This is a little too convenient, isn't it?," Nathaniel said, and he followed them through the passage with an arrow already nocked.
After a cautious examination of the chamber they'd opened up, which thankfully revealed no signs of darkspawn foes other than structures that were long-abandoned, they discovered their back entrance. A pit opened straight into the earth, wooden beams and a hopefully very sturdy ladder stretching down into the darkness.
"This is dwarven-made, not darkspawn," Oghren said, peering over the edge. "Old as shit, but not ancient."
"Some unlucky miners, maybe," Sigrun suggested. "Well, Ancestors bless whoever they were for leaving this behind! Down the hatch." Sigrun began to climb down before anyone could discuss in further. Even the Commander looked slightly taken aback at their unstoppable little guide. Anders winced, watching her disappear into the black.
"Anyone else regretting their life choices just now?"
"Far too late for regret," Nathaniel said, and he secured his bow with grim determination, following immediately after Sigrun without another moment's hesitation. Tabris allowed him to climb down a bit before she did as well, bidding the others to follow behind her as quietly as possible. Velanna followed first, then Oghren, and finally Anders, who hissed and cursed under his breath about not having missed scaling the Tower until Velanna finally shushed him.
The ladder, thank the Creators, did not lead into a pit of spikes or a troop of darkspawn with swords drawn and fangs bared. It was an abandoned tunnel, one of many to be found in the Deep Roads, that twisted and curled upward until at last it opened into a hallway of ancient dwarven construct. A stone door lay at the end, unsettling in its solitude. Commander Tabris signaled to Velanna and Anders to extinguish their staves. With apprehension, Velanna complied, and the tunnel plunged into darkness.
Her eyes, Velanna was surprised to find, adjusted fairly quickly. As the pitch black ebbed and gave way to dim gray, she realized that the walls here were lined with pale blue lichen, glowing softly and providing just enough light that they would not be going completely blind. Velanna watched as Sigrun and Tabris had a silent exchange, and Sigrun crept ahead, impressively quiet in her armor, to slip through the door alone.
Velanna almost didn't dare breathe. She listened closely for a sound; a scream, the clash of metal, anything. Now that she was focusing, she could sense the presence of darkspawn nearby… It seemed like an age passed before the door cracked open again, and Velanna's knuckles tightened around her staff before she saw with certainty that it was Sigrun, alone and unharmed. The door closed behind her, and she scampered back to the group.
"We've come around to the main entrance. They won't be expecting us from the back. If we play it right and avoid the traps, we can get the jump on them," Sigrun whispered.
"I sensed around a dozen," the Commander said.
Sigrun nodded. "Neat trick! Don't guess you 'sensed' the golems, though."
"G—" Oghren let out a choked sound, then covered his mouth. Velanna wished he'd try that more often.
"How many? Are they active?" Tabris asked. Sigrun nodded.
"Two. Lit up and ready to pummel us into paste."
"Did you see any of the darkspawn holding a control rod?"
"I think the little one at the back was their master. A genlock." Sigrun described the layout of the room to them, how the door led to a platform where the genlock waited, the staircases on their side each with its own golem guard, and then the room below, an entry hall littered with pressure plates. This had been the killing grounds for Sigrun's Legion, where they had unwittingly stumbled into a lake of fire. Those who hadn't been burned to death had been picked off by the dozen darkspawn waiting in the alcoves with blade and bow. By Sigrun's report, the corpses had already been picked over and dragged off. Velanna's desire to see the creatures destroyed grew by the minute.
The Commander was very quiet for a while. She emerged from her silence with a plan.
Nathaniel would be the first to move out, and he prepared without question or complaint. He had some manner of paralytic agent tucked away with his things, a little black vial that he used to coat the head of an arrow.
"That wasn't the one meant for me, was it?" the Commander said, a little smile tugging at the scar that gouged through her upper lip.
"You have a very dark sense of humor, ser," Nathaniel huffed as he worked. "But no. The one meant for you was worse." He smiled a little to himself. "I'll save that one for the Architect." As quietly as possible, Nathaniel eased open the door, crouching low to the ground and scanning the room. He nocked the arrow, his eyes focusing, his arm drew back—
Velanna could not see it, but she heard the arrow meet its mark, a dull thunk that might have been mistaken for a falling rock, or an errant footstep. No outcry sounded. He quickly fired off two more shots, one after the other. Nathaniel turned back to the group and signaled them to follow.
In the next room, two darkspawn grunts sprawled out on the ground, dead, arrows protruding from their necks. Between them, a genlock stood statue-still, paralyzed, its living eyes frozen in rage. Sigrun moved in without needing to be told, drawing her dagger and cutting the creature's throat. Its blood ran in thick gouts to the floor, and Sigrun forced it down to the ground to avoid any further noise. A quick search of its rigored fists revealed their prize— a strange little wand engraved with runes that Velanna took for the "control rod" they sought.
The next part would require swiftness, and a great deal of mana. Anders had more talent for healing than stoneshaping, so it was Velanna who swallowed down a lyrium draught, letting the electric burn of mana suffuse through her down to her fingertips. Tabris called out a command, and Velanna could see the two golems stumble into life, their great stone feet pounding against the stairs as they dashed down into the main chamber. They moved more slowly than a living person would, and Velanna watched anxiously as the darkspawn waiting for them below spun and shrieked in alarm. As soon at the golems had cleared the stairs, Velanna pounded her fists to the ground, and then lifted, not with her hands, but with bursts of magic plunged into the earth itself. Pillars of stone shot up at the base of the stairs, a great jagged wall that blocked the path. She dashed to the other side, repeating the action, digging deep for any reserved power, and her body strained with the effort, but another stone wall launched itself into being just as the golems reached their destination.
Just one errant step, and the entire room below them exploded in flames. The heat was overwhelming, and Velanna turned away, her eyes aching. The golems tore through the flames, unaffected, seeking out their former allies and tossing them like ragdolls into the worst of it. Unnatural screams rose above the roaring of the blaze, and after a while, guttered out.
Velanna could not watch any longer. She had seen such things before, or course, and at the time, felt sick satisfaction. She ought to feel it again now. She ought to rejoice in the destruction of such pure, unquestionable evil, and was disquieted to find she could not.
It seemed an age before the flames died, though it was only a few minutes. Velanna shattered her stone walls with a bit of effort, and they surveyed the chamber, looking for survivors or anything else of import, but it seemed that what darkspawn had not been burned to death had been bludgeoned by the golems. Anders held his nose, grimacing at the carnage.
"For the Legion," Sigrun said to herself, scanning the room with grim satisfaction.
The golems did not make for subtle scouts, but they did certainly come in handy. Velanna was starting to feel the strain of having used her magic so often in one day, but the golems were nearly tireless in their destruction. They descended deeper into the thaig, guarded against any darkspawn in their path by two walking battering rams. The darkspawn they encountered in the next chamber seemed to assume the golems were on their side until their skulls were crushed in a stone fist.
"Wish we could keep those," Anders said, admiring the golems from a safe distance.
"I feel a little strange about it, to be honest," said Tabris. "Not that I can afford to pass up their help, but after everything we discovered with Shale…"
"No time for sentimentality, now, Warden," said Oghren, then seemed to catch himself. "Commander." He swallowed. "For a second there, I forgot what year it was."
"Now who's sentimental?" Tabris looked at Oghren for a moment, the faint smile that turned up the corners of her eyes fading into thoughtful silence. "Let's break for a minute. Sigrun, when's the last time you ate anything?"
Velanna's stomach had not quite settled, and it lurched at the thought of food. She knew she must be hungry, it had been hours since they broke their fast, but she imagined she would have to force herself to eat.
Sigrun looked just as thrown as Velanna felt. "I… I'm not sure I remember."
Tabris set her bulging pack down on a stretch of stone that wasn't coated with darkspawn corruption or lichen. "If you need supplies, we've got enough for two weeks, you're welcome to share ours."
Oghren sat down heavily on an overturned pillar. "Well, if we're sharing…" He tugged a skin full of spirits out of his pack, sloshing it around with a leer. "Hey girlie, you ever tried Dragon Piss?"
Sigrun looked suspicious. "I'm assuming that's not literal."
"Try it and find out."
A bit separated from the rest of the group, Nathaniel had settled against a wall to clean his gear, his bow stretched out across his lap and a hard cracker stuffed in his mouth. The bow was a surprisingly elegant design, for a human weapon, gleaming pale wood with an almost blue tint. It strongly resembled ironbark, though Velanna knew it could not be. She had never heard of a human smith who was able to work the material adeptly.
Nathaniel stopped working to take a long drink from his waterskin. The hair humans grew on their faces had become darker as they traveled, and she noticed when he tilted his chin up that the thick growth stretched all the way down his jaw and onto his neck, where his throat bobbed. How strange.
"Is there something you wish to say to me, Velanna?"
Velanna startled, her face burning, as she realized Nathaniel had caught her. Yes! she thought. Why are you here? How do you face this danger so eagerly, if this is your punishment? How is it that Tabris trusts you so much, she can make jokes about your murder attempt?
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, and turned away. The others were trading Oghren's drink back and forth as they ate. She had no desire to put her mouth on anything Oghren's mouth had touched, but she felt the slight sinking sensation of having missed out on something anyway. "If you must know, I was looking at your bow. Is it ironbark?"
When Velanna turned back, Nathaniel's hard glare had softened somewhat. "Heartwood. It was my grandfather's. Seriah... returned it to me."
Velanna's skin prickled. "So she's 'Seriah' now? The two of you are that close?"
"She has offered her friendship to me," Nathaniel said, his expression darkening. "I have vanishingly few friends left, so yes, I suppose I value that a great deal. She forgave me, and I—" He looked down, returning to the task he had given himself. "I realized she had done nothing that required my forgiveness."
Velanna did not know what to say to that. Nathaniel had been offered a chance by the Commander, just as she had, and it had changed his view so drastically he had thrown aside his need for vengeance. How could a person change so much in so little time? She simply did not understand him.
Did she want to?
"Eat," Nathaniel said after a few minutes had passed. Velanna was irritated with herself to have been caught off guard yet again.
"What?"
"Eat something. We'll be moving again soon, and you've been using your magic a great deal. You're going to run yourself ragged."
Velanna frowned down at her hands. "I don't need you lecturing me on— I know how much strength I have left."
But as usual, Nathaniel could not leave the subject alone. "Even people who haven't been battling heinous cave-dwelling monsters all day need to eat, my lady." That drew a sharp glare from her, and he sighed, frustrated. "Fine, don't eat. You needn't listen to any advice from me."
Velanna scoffed even as she pulled a pouch of nuts and dried fruit from her pack, and was almost irritated to find that the distraction had settled her stomach. Breakfast seemed to have been centuries ago, and even travel rations tasted like a feast. Damn her tainted blood.
Next to her, Nathaniel began to laugh. "Is that all it takes? If I tell you something, you'll do the opposite? That's good to know."
"Quiet, shemlen," Velanna said around a mouthful of blueberries. "You're ruining my appetite."
"While you're at it, don't drink this," Nathaniel said, and threw her the waterskin. She very nearly missed catching it, and, making sure he got the full effect of her most withering look, she drank fully half of it in ten unbroken gulps, which only made him laugh harder until she threw it right back. It caught him on the jaw, and he winced in shock at the impact.
She ate as much as she dared, avoiding looking at him again for the duration of their rest. Seriah may have understood him, enough even to trust him, but that didn't mean Velanna had to. At least not any further than she needed to for their purpose here in this blighted thaig, or for the sake of her mission with the Wardens. And at least her stomach was no longer churning, her throat no longer dry. The water had not been sweet, but it would keep her alive long enough to make it to tomorrow. Velanna had relied on people who did not consider her a friend her entire life. She was certain she could manage it now.