One
As her consciousness felt out the horde of darkspawn, fear washed through her.
Kallian Tabris couldn't remember the last time she was truly afraid of one of the monsters, but she was filled with an anxious tingle now as she felt their numbers.
She remembered being afraid as she crept through the Korcari Wilds with Alistair before her Joining. She remembered feeling fear at the top of the Tower of Ishal when she felled her first ogre. She remembered jumping awake, shaking, covered in sweat and sobbing the first time she dreamt of the Archdemon.
But by the time she came to the top of Fort Drakon to slay the Archmdemon or prowled deep into the Dragonbone Wastes to engage the Mother, she couldn't remember being filled with the anticipatory dread that now filled her veins.
"Maker protect me," she thought. "Today is the day I come to your side."
Although the Chant of Light was always on her lips as she laid down to rest, it was the beautiful song she heard in her dreams now, calling out to her. It was a song she dare not heed, however. She knew the dark path that melody heralded and she refused it.
It was the song that called to all Grey Wardens, sooner or later.
O Maker, hear my cry:
Guide me through the blackest nights
Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked
Make me to rest in the warmest places.
She often recited the Chant to still her nerves and bring her calm. She recited it in her head when she fought, the words honing her concentration as the shield of the Maker and the Prophet kept her safe.
But she knew there would be no escape from this battle. She would continue to press forward until she fell, like thousands of Wardens before her time had done in these Deep Roads.
It was the Old Gods that called her home, but by the end of the night, she would rest in the presence of the Maker.
"Are you ready, Commander?"
Kallian was startled by the sudden break in the silence as Sigrun addressed her. While usually bubbly and perky, even Sigrun had become dire as they sat perched on the ledge, spying down into the crevice filled with darkspawn.
They wandered farther into the Deep Roads than she would have ever thought possible. Since the Fifth Blight, finding darkspawn was becoming more of a challenge. But the Deep Roads were expansive and parts hadn't been seen in centuries.
Sigrun and the other members of the Legion of the Dead that accompanied her stared in awe as they stumbled upon thaigs that had spent generations covered in the slimy, black, stinking corruption of the darkspawn.
They found statues of dwarven elders whose names who had been long lost to time. The history of Orzammar was just a sliver of the dwarven past, a history that actually had a chance to continue without being devoured by the darkspawn. The great houses in Orzammar and their squabbles were distant branches of trees that started in these thaigs, that were once connected by these great highways.
These places had now spent so much time under the shadow of the darkspawn that it was hard to even consider them drawven places now. Maybe if a thousand workers spent a hundred years scrubbing away all the filth, it might look like a dwarven hall again. But the few outside of the Legion of the Dead who had seen Kal'Hirol since Kallian liberated it knew that anywhere that wasn't Orzammar wasn't really dwarven any more.
This place was ancient. The walls were dwarven carved stone, but the features were so faded by years of darkspawn filth eroding them away. Only the slight ridges, the few columns jutting toward the ceiling above even hinted that something once lived here.
But the floor - which after a short wipe showed the remains of an intricately tiled mosaic of glazed stone - opened into a fissure below and Kallian could sense thousands of darkspawn skulking in the blackness below. It was too far to see and she dared not light torches or unsheath glowstones before she was ready to make her attack.
She could feel their consciousness, could sense them sniffing and feeling the air. The darkspawn could feel her and Sigrun here, she knew. The taint connected them.
They had slain maybe a dozen darkspawn patrols higher up in the Deep Roads without any issue. A day ago - maybe it was two or three by now - they had cut their way through a group of about a half-dozen ogres and lost three legionnaires in the process. Early today they had been ambushed by a group of shrieks that killed another two legionnaires and given Sigrun a bad enough wound that she was still muttering about it.
Then they found this trench.
She could feel a broodmother down there. Several broodmothers. There was no telling how deep or how far the chamber stretched, but Kallian knew it was a vile place.
She wondered if this might be one of the places the darkspawn first broke through in the Deep Roads ages ago during the First Blight. It certainly had that ancient feel to it. Kallian couldn't even be sure where they were in relation to the upper world any more. They had started in Orzammar and starting heading toward Kal Sharok far to the northwest in the Anderfels.
For all she could tell, they might under the heartlands of Orlais by now. They had passed a group of Orlesian Wardens days ago, who had come down from a hole that stretched up along the road between Jader and Halamshiral. Those Wardens had cleared out a few teams of tunnelers and were preparing to collapse the tunnel at multiple points to protect the surface.
She doubted any Orlesian Wardens had ever found this place, which meant it must be miles away from the nearest Warden stronghold or known entrance to the surface in Orlais.
Kallian swallowed, considering Sigrun's question.
Thoughts of her loved ones flashed through her head again, of all those she had said goodbye to before preparing for this final battle. Saying those goodbyes were perhaps even harder than accepting the fate she was about to swallow.
"Yes," she said matter of factly, as confidently as she could, with one final push to shove all the doubt and fear out of her.
It was a lie, but one that every Warden needed to tell before going to their end.