The Calling

11

Duncan felt like he was little more than a pile of bruises as he walked alongside the others. They’d had barely a handful of hours to rest, enough time to strip off some sweaty leathers that he felt like he’d been wearing for weeks and to rub magical ointment on his wounds. Fiona had passed it around, and they’d all taken a turn by the fire. It had been a litany of painful hisses, grunts, and relieved sighs.

His arm remained stiff and sore, but Kell had inspected it and declared that it was no longer broken. Fiona’s spell had done the trick, and the ointment had managed to relieve much of the ache that had been plaguing him since the battle. He experimentally flexed and unflexed his hand, frowning at the fact that it seemed difficult to make a proper fist. But he could, and that was what mattered.

Hafter was the only one of them who’d slept well. Almost as soon as they’d set up the fire, the hound had curled up at his master’s feet and was snoring within minutes. Duncan liked how the dog’s feet twitched, and how he would occasionally huff like he was about to bark in his sleep. A dog’s dreams were probably about running through sunny meadows and barking at squirrels, which was the sort of dream that Duncan wouldn’t mind having himself.

Then he remembered that Hafter was tainted just the same as the rest of the Grey Wardens. Perhaps his dreams were just as dark, and when he ran, he ran away from the frightening shadows that always lurked at the edges of a Grey Warden’s mind.

He hoped he was wrong, for the dog’s sake.

Genevieve led the way down the passage, tense and quiet. She was eager to get to Ortan thaig as quickly as possible now, and would brook no further delay. The others tried to keep up, but even so she pulled farther and farther ahead. They exchanged glances with each other, clearly wondering if she even cared that she was putting such distance between herself and the rest of her party.

Probably not, Duncan suspected.

He edged closer to Fiona and walked at her side for a time. The mage looked marginally less pale after some rest. Genevieve had strictly forbidden her to use any more magic to speed up the healing of the others, and though Fiona had complained, Duncan had to agree. All their major injuries had already been dealt with. She needed her strength, especially if Ortan thaig was as dangerous as Maric claimed.

He had told them all what had happened the last time he’d gone there eight years ago. Giant spiders, deformed by the taint, had swooped down upon them from a sea of spiderwebs that had obscured the upper reaches of the thaig. To defeat them, they’d burned the webs down. Duncan wondered if there would still be spiders there. He shuddered at the thought. He didn’t like small ones, and the thought of meeting ones as big as he was, poison dripping from their mandibles, was downright revolting.

“I need to tell you something,” he whispered to Fiona.

Nearby, Nicolas shot him an annoyed glare and sped up his pace to pull ahead. There was going to be no forgiveness there, Duncan saw. The warrior had been sullen and bristly by the campfire, barely attending to his own wounds and not even removing his soiled armor when he had the chance. He’d elected to take the first watch without question, stiffly walking off as the others looked after him in pity.

The elf was regarding him with interest. “What is it? Is it about Maric?”

“No!” he snorted. “What is it with you two?”

She sighed in exasperation. “Fine. What do you have to tell me?”

“It’s about Genevieve.” He glanced toward the Commander, and could barely see her off in the shadows ahead. It was as if the thaig were drawing her magnetically, and the closer they got to it the faster she was compelled to move. “She left the camp during the night. Not to go on watch, either. I mean she snuck off.”

Fiona looked puzzled. “Snuck off? What for?”

“That’s what I wondered. So I followed her.”

“And she didn’t see you?”

“I happened to be a very good thief in Val Royeaux before you lot came along, you know.”

“Point made. What did you see?”

“She didn’t actually go very far.” He hesitated, suddenly not sure he should be relating the story, after all. Perhaps Genevieve would view it as an invasion of her privacy. He had been snooping on her, though at the time he told himself he was just making sure she’d be safe. But now that he’d brought it up with Fiona, there wasn’t any point in stopping. “She went just down a ways from the crossroads with a torch. Then she began taking off her armor.”

“You watched her strip?”

“No! I mean … well, yes, but it wasn’t like that. I thought that maybe she just wanted some privacy. I was going to turn around and let her be, and that’s when I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“I thought it was a bruise.” He remembered only too well the patch of discoloration that had extended all the way from the Commander’s bare shoulder down the side of her ribs and almost to her thigh. He had been alarmed at first, especially at its intensity. Too dark to be a bruise, he’d wondered if maybe it had been a burn from the dragon’s fiery breath. Had she been hiding her injury this entire time? Why would she? “It wasn’t, though. I don’t think Genevieve knew what it was, either. She held the torch close to take a good look in the light.”

“And what did she see?”

“I thought … I thought it looked like darkspawn flesh.”

Fiona stared ahead, pondering this information as they walked. For a moment, Duncan regretted telling her. He hadn’t been sure what to think when he’d seen the “bruise.” He’d been horrified, and from the look on Genevieve’s face, she’d felt the same. He had the feeling, however, that it hadn’t been the first time she’d seen it. She’d known it was there, and had hidden it from the rest of them.

“It could just be an injury,” she offered. “An old injury.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What else could it be?” She turned to look at him sharply. “Do you think she caught the plague? She’s a Grey Warden, how can that be?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Maric walked up to them suddenly, effectively interrupting their conversation. “What are you two whispering about so urgently?” he asked, trying to fight against a yawn and losing the battle.

“It’s nothing,” Fiona said too quickly.

“I was just telling her how tired I was,” Duncan cut in. “We didn’t get much sleep before Genevieve was kicking us all up. I could have sworn I’d just shut my eyes.”

Kell walked close, his bow unslung and at the ready. Hafter padded along amiably beside him. “I, for one, am glad we did not sleep more,” the hunter muttered.

“Really?” Maric asked.

“The dreams were difficult to bear.” Kell’s eyes darkened and he looked away. Hafter glanced up at his master, whining quizzically.

Utha stepped toward them, making several agitated gestures with her hands. Fiona sighed and nodded her agreement. “I was the same. The dreams came as soon as I closed my eyes, like I was drowning in them.” She closed her eyes and shuddered at the memory.

“Perhaps it is being within the Deep Roads?” Kell asked.

Maric shrugged. “I haven’t had any dreams. Besides the usual, I mean.”

“Grey Wardens always have dreams,” Fiona explained. “It comes with being part of the darkspawn consciousness. They’ve been getting worse since we entered the Deep Roads.”

“Each night has been worse than the last,” Kell added grimly.

“Not me.” Duncan put up his hand. “I’ve been fine.”

Fiona regarded him with a suspicious eye. “Are you sure? I thought for certain …”

“No. Just the normal sort of cheese dreams.”

“Oh! I get those,” Maric chuckled.

“Really? Fiona was using these spells to turn the darkspawn into giant pillars of stinky cheese, and I kept thinking, ‘Why stinky cheese, of all things? I hate stinky cheese.’ But she wouldn’t use a different spell and got really angry at me.”

“You mean like that?” He indicated the elf, who was indeed glaring at them with seething disapproval.

“You are both idiots,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes.

“I think it was more that she just really liked stinky cheese,” he told Maric. “She kept taking a big bite out of each pillar. All I could smell was feet.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“That’s what I said!”

Genevieve’s appearance ahead of them cut off all conversation sharply, like a splash of cold water. They all stared as she stormed back toward them, her demeanor cold fury. “Why have you slowed?” she demanded. “We are there.” Without waiting for a response she turned back.

They rushed to catch up, and quickly discovered that she was correct.

Fiona held up her staff and let the white light shine intensely into the cavern they entered, and that still didn’t reveal it all. Duncan felt like they were disturbing a tomb, a great cavern full of the skeletons of ancient dwarven buildings long since settled to their quiet decay. He could see hints of crumbling walkways, great columns and statues fallen to the ground and shattered, gutted buildings, some of which climbed almost up to the vaulted ceiling high overhead.

Once this had been a bustling city, and now it seemed nothing more than silent and still. A thick black dust had settled over everything, and the upper reaches of the cavern were nothing more than a grey cloud full of strange clumps. If that was all a result of the webs being burned down so many years before, they hadn’t been rebuilt. Perhaps the giant spiders had moved on? They could always hope.

“Ortan thaig,” Maric breathed. Duncan noticed the distant, haunted look in his eyes. He got that way every time he thought of his last voyage in the Deep Roads. It made Duncan wonder why the man had agreed to come back here at all, despite the urgency of their mission.

Genevieve had her greatsword held out before her warily. All of them had their weapons in hand now, in fact, staring into the still shadows as if they expected a swarm of monsters to come rushing out at them. “Has anything changed?” she asked Maric.

“Fewer cobwebs.”

The Commander gestured to Kell, who moved forward and knelt, studying the thick layers of dust and dirt that covered the stone. Hafter paced around him, snuffling at the ground with his nose and sneezing. “There has been much movement through this cavern. Most of it has been very recent, and darkspawn.”

“And my brother?” she asked.

The question hung in the air, and Kell paused. He stared at the ground with his pale eyes, as if he could see patterns in the faint tracks that none of the rest of them could. Duncan suspected that was probably the case. The hunter had a sensitivity to the taint that went far beyond any tracking ability he might have learned during his time with the Ash Warriors. He was always the first to sense the approach of darkspawn, and he could discern between the various breeds by their scent alone. Some of the Grey Wardens even used to claim that Kell could do the same with them, sense who was who from afar just as if they were darkspawn. If so, the hunter never commented on it.

“Your brother has been through here,” he finally agreed.

“Where?”

He arched his brow at her. “I am accustomed to his particular scent, Genevieve, but even I cannot track him through all the others. He has been here; that is all I know.” He gestured at the ground, and even Duncan could see that the piles of black dust and dirt had been disturbed by many pairs of feet. Darkspawn feet, presumably, though apparently not all.

Genevieve frowned in frustration, and she searched the distant shadows of the thaig helplessly. Then her features hardened and she set her jaw, turning back to regard the others. “Then we search every inch of this ruin until we find some trace of him.”

“How do we know there even is a trace?” Maric asked. “He could have just passed through. He could have been chased through, for all we know.”

“Then let us find out where he ran,” she growled. Hefting the greatsword onto her shoulder, she turned and marched into the ruined streets of the thaig. The others followed without question.

For a time they moved carefully through the narrow passages between buildings. Some of the walls and walkways had collapsed, leaving large chunks of rubble strewn in their way, but much of it had not. It was a testament to the skills of the dwarves that many of these rune-covered arches and delicate statues were still standing.

The light from Fiona’s staff bathed everything in a harsh glare, but left many shadows. Everywhere Duncan looked there was darkness just beyond the edge of the staff’s white glow, waiting behind statues and in doorways, obscuring the secrets this place kept. He imagined that Maric’s spiders still hid in those depths, watching them progress with their many dark little eyes and waiting until they had proceeded too far in to retreat.

He rubbed his arms, feeling suddenly cold, and Fiona shot him a dark look. She held her staff at the ready, alertly watching for signs of attack. They all were. The only sound they could hear besides their muffled steps in the dust was Hafter’s growling. The hound’s hackles were raised, and he appeared to find every building they passed worthy of staring down.

Only Maric didn’t seem ready for combat. He held his longsword loosely at his side, walking among the others and staring up at the walls around them with wide, sad eyes. He’d told them of the spiders, yes, but what else had happened here? Was he thinking of the elven woman, the one he’d loved? Was he thinking of his wife?

They passed a stone arch, one where the wall around it had collapsed, leaving only the cracked and dusty curve of the arch standing alone. Large runes had been carved along the top, and Utha stopped and stared up at them, her face grim and unreadable.

“What is it?” Kell asked her quietly, walking up behind her.

She made several gestures, most of which Duncan couldn’t understand. But he recognized one of them: family. This must have belonged to the house she came from, he realized, a part of her family’s legacy. Kell nodded in understanding and patted her shoulder. She continued to stare up at that arch, quiet determination in her eyes.

They entered what looked like it had once been an outdoor amphitheater, the steps now falling apart and the stage now littered with darkspawn bones yellowed with age. There were so many strewn amid the debris that Duncan marveled at them.

As they passed through a narrow alleyway, Nicolas found a crevice in one of the walls that led into an old armory. It was huge, the stone forges still upright and looking almost as if someone could walk up and stoke the fires even now to get them going again. The rest of it was in ruins, barrels falling apart and metal tools rusting on the ground. There were pieces of things that might have been used for forging metal, and impressive-looking weapons, now pitted and tarnished, still hanging on the walls.

One of the forges was excessively tall, reaching all the way up to the stone ceiling and covered in runes all down the side of its chimney. It looked more like a giant oven, Duncan thought, with strange holes perforating its side at regular intervals.

“It’s for dragonbone,” Maric mentioned behind him. “They get the bone so hot they need to pour water through the holes to cool it off. You see where it goes through the floor there? That goes down to a lava pit.” He grinned at Duncan. “Or so King Endrin called it when he showed me the one in Orzammar. He said it hadn’t been used in centuries.”

Duncan peered into one of the holes. He saw nothing but darkness, and no obvious mechanism for opening up the forge. “Maybe your sword was made here.”

“Maybe it was.”

They moved through the armory and forced open the rusted doors, discovering what must have once been some kind of central square just outside. The staff’s light revealed evidence of a battle from long ago, one that the passage of time had not completely eradicated. Some of the barricades still existed, slabs of stone and benches and other large items that had been dragged to close off access from the nearby lanes. Most of these had fallen apart. Or the walls around them had disintegrated. Or they had been torn down by what ever force had attacked the people here.

For here they remained. Even amid all the dirt and dust, Duncan could see the shards of bones and pieces of rusted armor and weapons—and none of it was darkspawn. There was a stone fountain in the middle of the square, the statue of a horn-blowing dwarf still standing in its middle. It was overgrown with lichen and thick black moss, much of which had died when whatever water had been within the fountain had disappeared ages ago. The concentration of bones was thickest around there. A last stand, perhaps, the defenders forced to put their backs against the fountain as they fought the darkspawn invaders to the bitter end.

It was a sad scene. Duncan tried not to picture the desperation that these dwarves must have felt, abandoned to their fate. They had fallen here, and what ever injured or survivors there had been had no doubt been taken away by the darkspawn, while the others just remained where they fell. They decayed here as the years passed and the dust settled, the fountain went dry, and nobody at all marked that they had died.

Utha stepped toward one of the barricade piles and began pulling at one of the larger flat slabs of stone at its base. It refused to budge and so she pulled harder, putting her back into it, and this was when Duncan realized she was crying. Silent tears were streaming down her face as she attempted to pull the slab free, her frustration mounting.

Nicolas went to assist her, and the dwarf stopped as soon as he got close. He gave her a compassionate look and bent down to help, and after composing herself she continued her task. Kell joined them and within moments the trio had worked the slab free. Genevieve watched quietly, not objecting to this strange practice but still eager to move on.

They slowly dragged the slab to the fountain and together lifted it upright so it leaned against the stone. Sweating with effort, Utha removed her black cloak and threw it over the top of the slab. It settled there, and she stared up at it silently.

They all did. It was a poor marker, perhaps, but it was better than nothing.

Utha wiped at her tears and shook off her grief. If she offered up a prayer to her Paragon ancestors, she could only mouth them to herself. Duncan would have been tempted to say a prayer to the Maker, but he didn’t have King Maric’s facility for such things. He didn’t know a single line of the Chant of Light, and besides that he had no idea whether the dead dwarves would have even appreciated such a tribute.

They moved on. In time, Kell led them to an abandoned campfire. How he found it, Duncan hadn’t a clue, but as they got near he pointed it out. A small campfire at the base of a tall obelisk, completely undamaged by the passage of time. The obelisk shot up like a finger in the dark, completely smooth on all sides, the top of it obscured in shadows.

Genevieve ran over, eagerly searching around the campfire for anything left behind. There was nothing, though from the way the dust was disturbed it looked like someone had slept on a bedroll there very recently. She turned and motioned to Kell, although he was already running over to join her.

After a moment of kneeling by the fire, he looked up at her and nodded. “He was here. This camp is recent.”

“Is there any indication of where he went?”

“No. He slept here, however, so clearly made it this far without meeting the darkspawn.”

“Is that possible?” she asked, troubled. “They would have sensed him. A lone Grey Warden moving through the Deep Roads should draw darkspawn like flies.”

“Nevertheless, here he was.”

Maric stepped forward. “Are you certain it was darkspawn that captured him? Or that he’s even been captured? You said he was alive, and maybe he is, but I don’t see the darkspawn trying to take any prisoners.”

Genevieve spun on the King, and for a moment Duncan thought she was going to attack him. Her rage slowly died down, however, and she turned back to stare at the gutted campfire. Her eyes became hollow and haunted. “No,” she finally admitted. “I don’t know that for certain.”

For a long minute the group remained quiet. There was not a single sound in the dark cavern, and only the faintest musty breeze—air that was brought in through what ever masterpiece of dwarven engineering remained in this place, Duncan assumed. He wondered what other sorts of creatures could be down here that might have captured a Grey Warden, and why they might do so. And if it was darkspawn, why would they suddenly start acting in a way they never had before?

Genevieve cast about in all directions, looking far off into the cavern. What she was searching for, he really couldn’t tell. A clue? A feeling, anything? So much of the thaig was shrouded in shadow, she likely couldn’t see very much. The skeletons of buildings hovered around them, silhouettes of sturdy statues and the tattered estates of what had surely once been great dwarven families. They didn’t have time to search it all.

“There,” she stated firmly, pointing off into the distance.

Duncan looked to where she was pointing: In the shadow-filled end of the thaig, barely seen at the edge of their light, was the remnant of a great palace that had been carved into the rock. It might have been beautiful once, pillars and promenades leading up to a set of grandiose gates that towered high over any visitors, but now it was little more than a husk, a series of broken steps and debris and gaping holes carved into the wall that led deep within. The old palace was covered in strands of old ash and dirt, and who knew what lay inside that dark warren of tunnels?

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he muttered under his breath.

“But why there?” Kell asked carefully.

“Because that is where he would go,” she stated with certainty. “If he came here, that is where he would head.” Without saying another word she began to march in that direction. The others looked at each other uncertainly, but one by one they followed her. There was little choice, really.

“We’re stumbling around blindly,” Fiona whispered, scowling. Duncan glanced at her but didn’t comment. They weren’t blind, really. They were following Genevieve’s vision, but it felt more and more like they were stumbling after a ghost. He wondered if their commander really knew where she was going anymore, and he suspected the others wondered the same thing. It took them several hours to make their way up finally to the palace ruins. The land sloped upward the nearer they got, and yet the amount of debris became so thick it was impossible to remain on the roads. Entire buildings had collapsed here, choking the paths and forcing them actually to climb over the piles of masonry rather than trying to go around them.

As they reached the foot of the main steps leading up into the palace, Duncan began to realize just how enormous it truly was. The stairs alone towered high above them, requiring a climb of over a hundred feet, much of it on steps that had long ago cracked and crumbled away. They were littered with pieces of stone that had fallen from above and bits of bone and rusted metal that might have once been bodies.

One of the intact pillars lining the stairs was easily hundreds of feet high, almost reaching the top of the cavern. Its surface was a spiderweb of thick cracks, and he wondered whether if it crumbled, the palace’s vaulted ceiling would come crashing down on top of them. The ceiling might once have held breathtaking frescoes. Now it was stained and burned, with only a hint of the beauty that it had once had.

Several of the other pillars were already crumbled, and at least one enormous section of a pillar lay in their path. Clearly when that had come crashing down, it had caused great destruction and created a giant crater in what was once a marble landing in front of the gigantic palace doors.

Only one of those doors still remained, and it lay open and askew as if it was just barely hanging on before it, too, tumbled to the ground. It might have been bronze, Duncan thought. Now it was stained with an ugly green patina, and covered with coarse lichen that completely obscured what ever fancy inscriptions and carvings decorated its surface long ago.

Beyond it lay only shadows. He saw hints of giant webs; gossamer strands of it now hung from the ceiling. The group exchanged wary glances when they saw a blackened husk just inside the door, and only upon coming closer did they see it was one of the giant spiders about which Maric had told them, its legs curled in close to its body like a twisted rib cage. How long it had lain there they couldn’t say, but it was long enough to be as covered with dust as everything else at the entrance.

“Perhaps you got them all,” Duncan breathed, still staring in horror at the spider.

“We didn’t think so,” Maric said. “We heard them moving the next day. Or at least we thought it was them.”

Genevieve poked the husk with her sword, and with a hard push rolled it over. Its head became visible, and Duncan saw that its mandibles were easily large enough to cut off a man’s head. Thankfully its many eyes had long ago shriveled up and been covered by dust. He didn’t want to see them. “You thought the spiders kept their nest in this palace?” she asked the King.

“We never came up here to see.”

“We haven’t seen any live spiders since our arrival,” she said thoughtfully, more to herself than to anyone.

Kell knelt down, running his hand through the layer of dust on the ground and then rubbing it between his fingers. “Someone has been through here recently,” he murmured.

“Was it my brother?” Genevieve demanded.

“I do not know.” His brow furrowed with confusion. “The trail is odd. It was definitely just a single creature, either the man we seek or a darkspawn. Only …”

“It is enough. We go inside.” She began to pass through the doorway, her sword held out cautiously in front of her as she looked up and around at the hanging web strands.

“Wait, I don’t …”

“Come,” she ordered. Duncan ran to catch up to her, and he heard the others following. His heart thundered in his ears, sweat dripping down his face as they slowly moved into the depths of the dwarven palace. He didn’t know what they would find inside, but the fear that gripped him claimed it would be nothing good.

Somehow he had imagined that the webs would just get thicker and thicker until they reached the heart of some nest, with some great monstrous spider queen to greet them. But it wasn’t like that at all. The webs began to disappear not long after the entrance, and while they found a few more shriveled spider corpses, those, too, ended. The shadows closed in around them, the air getting thicker and thicker. The sounds of their labored breath and the echoes of their slow footsteps on the stone were all he could hear.

They entered an enormous gallery, lined with dwarven statues and large paintings that had blackened and fallen apart from the passage of time. The staff’s light only revealed a small part of it, but it seemed like it went on forever, great marble pillars shooting up to a ceiling he couldn’t even see.

The sound of their footsteps changed suddenly. It became a loud crunching noise, as if they were crushing gravel underfoot. “Look,” Kell said.

Duncan looked down. The floor of the gallery was all but covered in a sea of bones. Darkspawn bones. Many of the skeletons were still intact, the corrupted flesh long since dried up until it was a leathery sheath. They still wore their blackened breastplates and weapons, as well. A great battle had occurred here, these darkspawn pressing inward toward … what, exactly? And what had killed them all?

Their numbers grew greater the farther in they walked. It was possible to pick a path among the bones, but not easy. Duncan began to identify dwarven skeletons among the darkspawn. They had been outnumbered. Dozens and dozens of darkspawn for every defender. He saw one dwarven corpse still in its rusted armor, surrounded by a pile of darkspawn bones in a way that made it look as if they had all died while the creatures had been tearing the dwarf apart. All at once. That couldn’t be right, could it?

“This is bizarre,” Maric said beside him, mirroring his thoughts as he looked around. Duncan simply nodded. “And her brother came through here?”

“There is a trail,” Kell commented from nearby.

“But is it his?”

The hunter looked at Maric with his pale eyes and said nothing, the answer in them clear: He didn’t know. Genevieve was not letting that stop her, however. If anything, she was speeding up as she moved through the gallery, almost as if she fully expected to find her brother on the other side.

Duncan had his doubts. Could anything be alive in here other than them? If Genevieve’s brother was here, how could he not have heard their approach? Their crunching steps were echoing loudly in the gallery, a cacophony that seemed violently at odds with the serenity of this graveyard. He had heard stories of skeletons possessed by demons that would get up and lash out at anything living—he half expected these bones to do just that, rising to silence the intruders in their silent domain.

A pair of giant stone doors loomed ahead of them, appearing out of the gloom like twin monoliths towering over the bones below. The doors had been battered inward by some great force, and it was easy to see what that was. There were huge darkspawn corpses in front of the doors, massive things that must have once been twelve feet tall with great, curved horns protruding from their skulls. They were called ogres, if he remembered, but he’d never actually seen a living one.

Their battering rams lay next to their corpses, wicked-looking hunks of metal that they must have used to force in those doors. How long that had taken, one could only imagine. Days, probably. There were all sorts of debris on the other side of the doors, some massive barricade that the darkspawn had finally broken their way through and poured past, dying by the hundreds as they did so.

Genevieve approached the doors cautiously, her eyes wide as she strained to peer beyond them. With a wave of her gauntlet to Nicolas, she sent him around the other side of the ogre corpses. Nothing stirred.

“More light,” she ordered Fiona.

The mage frowned, and with concentration her staff suddenly flared into brilliance. Duncan squinted and covered his eyes. Suddenly he could see all the dead skeletons in the gallery, stretching out for hundreds and hundreds of feet behind him. An entire army. He could make out the runes carved into the pillars, and the great beams still criss-crossing the ceiling a hundred feet overhead.

Beyond the doors lay a round, domed chamber. The first thing Duncan noticed was the throne that sat on a stone dais in the center of it. The second thing was the sea of skeletons. They were dwarves, all of them, a layer of bones so thick it was impossible to see the floor. The dais itself was bare, but one lone skeleton sat on that throne. A single, silent witness to the carnage, now covered in a layer of dust.

One by one, the group moved into the chamber. They picked their footing carefully among the fallen bodies, staring around with wonder. The hush was palpable. It was as if they were stepping foot into something dark and terrible, where the light from Fiona’s staff seemed harsh and unwelcome.

“Look at them all,” Fiona said in awe.

The skeletons in the room were thickest near the doors. At first his assumption had been simply that the dwarves had been fighting the darkspawn as they’d burst through the doors, the last ditch defense of their dwarven ruler. But where were the darkspawn corpses inside the throne room? There were none.

Utha made a gesture, her eyes wide. Kell nodded. “I agree. This is too strange.”

“We should go,” Maric said quietly.

“No,” Genevieve snapped. Sword out, she began to move closer to the throne. “There is something here. I can feel it.”

“Something, yes,” Maric shouted after her. “But not your brother!”

She ignored him.

Duncan walked to the corpses that were right next to the door, kneeling down to get a closer look. Fiona was behind him, also intrigued. He noticed that only some of them still had weapons, now rusted and useless. The rest of them had nothing. Outside in the gallery, the skeletons were all still holding their blades, or their blades were nearby, but in here the weapons were just somewhere on the floor.

Fiona breathed in sharply. “Look on the doors!”

In the light he could see it clearly: The inside of the doors were covered in scratches. Long, shallow scratches everywhere. Some of the skeletons still reached up with their limbs, still clawed at the door. It was the same on the wall by the doors. Some of the finger bones were worn down to the knuckles.

These dwarves hadn’t been fighting the darkspawn. They had been trying to get out even as the darkspawn were battering their way in. Something had frightened them so terribly they had tried to claw their way out with their bare hands. And then they had died. All of them, at once. And the darkspawn had died with them.

What had happened here?

Something was terribly, terribly wrong. Duncan turned around and saw Genevieve stepping up onto the dais, with Maric and the others just behind her. She seemed transfixed by the single dwarven skeleton that sat on that throne. It seemed to recline there, in a stone chair that was far larger than it was, as if it had simply fallen asleep with its arms still on the rests. It wore an elaborate black helmet, with small horns and an iron face guard, and black chain armor still draped across its bones. And there was not a single other corpse within thirty feet of it.

The dwarves had been trying to get away from the throne.

“Wait!” Duncan called out.

Genevieve stopped and turned back, curious, and he watched in horror as the skeleton on the throne beside her suddenly moved. It lifted its head, its eye sockets alight with a red, sinister glow. A thick power swelled in the shadows around them, a susurrus of voices in their ears as an old magic took form.

The Commander wheeled on the skeleton, her eyes wide with terror, and held out her sword threateningly. “Get back! Get back!” she shouted to the others. Utha and Kell backed up slowly, the hunter with his bow drawn. Hafter stayed at his side, growling menacingly. Maric and Nicolas remained at Genevieve’s back, drawing their weapons.

*YOU HAVE COME.* The voice both came from the skeleton on the dais as well as rang out in Duncan’s head. He could feel it slithering into his mind like an eel, like something that left a disgusting trail behind it that made him shiver. *I HAVE WAITED, AND AT LAST YOU HAVE COME.*

Nicolas roared in rage and charged at the skeleton, his shield up and his mace high over his head. The skeleton waved a hand at him and a surge of power sent him flying off the dais, crashing hard to the ground amid the skeletons.

“Nicolas!” Genevieve shouted.

*WHEN THE DWARVEN PRINCE CALLED TO ME, I GRANTED WHAT HE DESIRED. AND I HAVE WAITED IN THE DARKNESS FOR ONE TO TAKE ME BACK INTO THE LIGHT, AND YOU HAVE COME.*

“Never!” Genevieve shouted again. “I will never!”

Duncan raced toward the dais, pulling out his daggers, with Fiona running at his side. Already she was gathering a corona of power around the head of her staff, whispering words under her breath. Magic was filling the entire chamber, but he wasn’t sure it was all hers. The light was dark and greenish, prickling at his skin and filling his body with a strange heaviness.

*NOT YOU.* The skeleton turned now and pointed at Fiona, extending a long and bony finger out at her. She skidded to a halt, gasping out loud as a liquid blackness enveloped her. *IT IS YOU.* The staff dropped from her hands, its white glow winking out completely, her eyes widening in shock.

Maric rushed at the skeleton and it lashed out with its other hand, sending a bolt of lightning that threw him back, forcing him to jerk and spasm on the ground as electrical energies sparked over his entire body. He screamed in agony.

Two arrows sped at the skeleton, lodging in its bones uselessly. Genevieve lifted her sword up high. “Attack it! Destroy it!” She rushed at the creature, leaping over Maric on the ground, with Utha immediately behind her. Duncan turned to help Fiona, reaching out to try to free her from the black power that had her in its thrall, but it was so freezing cold that it burned his hand. He recoiled, hissing in sudden pain.

*I KNOW WHAT YOU DESIRE.* The skeleton lifted both its hands now and the greenish glow in the room intensified. Duncan felt it affecting him, draining his energy. He stumbled to one knee, his head suddenly full of cotton like he had just woken up from a deep sleep. On the dais, Genevieve and Utha also stumbled to their knees. Kell dropped his bow, wavering, and Hafter whined in confusion. *I LURED YOU HERE WITH THE PROMISE OF THAT DESIRE, AND YOU CAME. AT LAST I SHALL BE FREE OF THE DARKNESS.*

It was all Duncan could do to keep from collapsing to the ground. Sweat beaded his forehead and he dropped both his daggers. His vision swam. He saw Maric trying valiantly to pull himself along the ground toward the skeleton, gritting his teeth with effort. Utha fell, unconscious, and Genevieve was not far behind her.

Dismay filled Duncan as he saw something rise up out of the skeleton, like gossamer wisps of smoke that lifted up from its bones and swam across the air to sink into Fiona.

The elf threw back her head and let out a horrible, keening wail. Her entire body tensed, her hands flying out at her sides. Her skin became a pale white, and then began to change. It bulged, and twisted. Her body grew, and took on a hideous form, her head becoming something gnarled and fanged even as she shrieked in torment.

And then the transformation was done. A demonic abomination now stood where Fiona once had, a thing of rent flesh and claws, its gender no longer even apparent. The thing’s eyes glowed with menace, and it regarded Duncan with amusement. It waved a hand at him.

*SLEEP.*

The world became grey and fuzzy, and the ground rushed up to greet him. He slept. Despite every fiber of his being fighting against it, still he slept.

They all did.