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For ages upon ages, he had slumbered.

Beneath tons of rock, in complete darkness, he slumbered.

After so very many years, he could barely remember how he had come to be trapped inside the earth. There was an impression of laughter, and agonizing pain, and then he could no longer stretch his wings, no longer feel wind upon his scales. He was enveloped by smells of sulfur and iron and the occasional whiff of something sharper. Something cold and intoxicating: the iridescent blue ore that snaked through the stone, though none broke through the walls of his prison. There was only darkness, and rock, and a faint pulse of music all around him. Or perhaps the music – just a single line of melody - came from within.

So he slumbered, and he dreamt, and in his dreams he relived memories, and flew even though his body was trapped. He saw mountains and rivers and the bright strip of sand along the shores of the sea. He saw the sun glint off his daughter's shining scales, as she made her first flight from a tall, chalky white cliff. He saw the mosaic of landscape below him: cities and farm fields, with bright blue rivers meandering through.

In his dreams, he banked on a current of wind, felt the sun warm his hide. He bellowed at the top of his lungs, and heard his mate return the greeting. He felt his teeth sink into the tender flesh of his prey, and tasted its blood. Everything he touched was made beautiful, with color and with song and with magic. He soared above the world, triumphant, occasionally descending to accept the offerings that were made by the tiny creatures who cringed at his feet, or who lifted their faces to him in awe. He was worshipped and hated and loved and feared.

Through it all, he sang the song of his ancestors in harmony with his brothers and sisters. The soaring, tender, magnificent song of dragonkind. The song that even now he continued to hum, though it sounded weak and broken with just a single part.

From time to time, he awoke, trapped and helpless, and the things he remembered only caused a yearning inside him, a yearning that threatened to break him, to shatter his mind and his heart and his soul.

So, instead, he slumbered.

After countless generations, the profound darkness robbed him of even his dreams. No longer could he see the faces of those he had loved, or remember their scent in his nostrils. No longer could he hear in his mind the melody chanted by the priests in his temple, a song that was merely a shadow of the majesty of dragonsong, but which cheered him, nonetheless, for its earnestness. The sunlit sky, and the stars twinkling overhead, were lost to him. Even his dreams became dark and blurry, full of shadows and impressions and things glimpsed in passing.

Still, he slumbered.

There was no way of knowing how much time had passed. Then, something tickled at him, something that came out of the darkness, came through it.

Sounds were the first things to come into his awareness. They entered his dreams, chittering and scratching, and then voices that grunted and growled in a mindless frenzy. They drew nearer and nearer, and echoed in the closeness of the chamber where he had been imprisoned for so very long. Then there were new smells, as well. Blood and ash and something darker. Something too sweet, like rotting fruit.

After so long in isolation, the sensations overwhelmed him. They haunted and mesmerized him, until finally the rock at his shoulder crumbled, and a breath of wind blew against his cheek. A single voice rose above the howls, a voice that didn't gibber mindlessly, but that spoke with a cadence too lyrical to be anything other than language, even though his tormented mind could not understand its meaning.

An unholy stench filled his nostrils, and then a horrible taste upon his tongue – of copper and ash and blue rock and despair – and he tried to recoil, but had nowhere to go, and then, like a tendril of root burrowing into his body, he felt it. A darkness that was slick and black and oily. That clung to him like algae on rock. A darkness that spread through him, corrupting all it touched. It sang to him, and left him both numb and ablaze with cold fire. It seeped through his skin and muscle and sinew, all the way into his bones. It made him want to claw off his skin, to rip and shred his own flesh. It made him want to roar and breath fire.

It made him want to stretch his wings and fly.

Flashes of memory haunted him – the curve of a wing in flight, temple incense, gleaming sunlight on water – but then, the memories began to fade. He tried to chase them, to grab hold of them, but they slipped away like water through his claws.

He tried to sing, but there was only an agonized roar as his mind no longer remembered the song, the song he learned before he had even hatched from his egg. The song he had sung every day of his life, and had hummed in his sleep for so long. This, too, he tried to grasp, but the melody twisted, the notes grew discordant and hollow, and the ends of the phrases failed to resolve. Instead of bringing peace, he was left aching in nothingness, disconnected from all he had ever been.

Frantic, he stretched one huge clawed foot and scratched at the place where the creatures had come through, began to widen the opening, began to tunnel his way out of this darkness. With each stroke, his pace increased, and he took no care with where he placed his claws. Only vaguely was he aware of the squeals and shrieks of the creatures who moved too slowly to avoid being impaled or shredded. The howls of those who were trapped with nowhere to retreat, and were crushed by the passage of his body.

He clawed his way through the rock until he found himself in open air. Not under the sky, but in a cavern whose walls stretched so high the ceiling was shrouded in shadow. Exhausted and bloody from scraping his body across jagged rock, he crawled to a ledge, and had to squint at the brightness down below: stinking, burning hot lava, impossibly bright to eyes that had not seen so much as the light of a single candle for ages. It seared his vision, but also warmed his skin and soothed the aches in his muscles from having lain motionless for so long.

For the first time in ages upon ages, he stretched himself out to his full length. All around him, voices gibbered and whispered. He wanted to push them away, but he couldn't. Their stench maddened him, and he tried to remember how this had happened, what had brought him here, but nothing was clear. The burning that had spread through his body and destroyed his song had corrupted his thoughts as well. His mind raced, desperate to find a thread to cling to, something to bind him to his past, to who and what he had once been. But there was nothing for him to grasp. Nothing but these creatures that surrounded him, scuttling like vermin.

They came to him, more and more all the time, and he hated them, wanted to kill them all. Wanted to rip them apart, to crush them in his jaws, but he was compelled and intrigued by them as well. And connected to them. Always connected.

This time, when he slept, it was born of exhaustion, and a desire to be free of the noise and the terror, even if only for a few hours.

A new dream came to him, one that felt and smelled different than any he'd had before. He dreamt of a creature with green eyes and dark hair. A creature that walked on two legs, and had lived most of its life in the light, but still had streak of darkness running through it.

A girl. A human girl. Why would such a frail, puny, pathetic creature appear in his dreams?

Strange as it was to find her here, her visage - wavy and unclear as if viewed through flowing water – gave him a feeling of something he might have called hope, if he could have found the word in his ravaged mind. Something in her called to him, and he struggled against the darkness that coursed through his veins, through the taint that burned in his blood. He reached out toward her with his mind. Even as he fought to form words in some language she might be able to understand, he reached out, and gave just the lightest touch.

Listen . . .

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Rhianna sat up in bed, and gasped for breath.

Weight pressed down on her, tons of rock, and everything was dark, and sulfur burned in her nostrils. She clutched at the ground beneath her, and her fingers ached with the effort as the familiar panic began to pull at her. It pinched and grabbed at her chest and twisted her stomach into a knot. It left her unable to fill her lungs with air. She couldn't move, she was trapped, imprisoned in a place far too small for her to even stretch out her legs.

She sobbed, and panted, and the darkness shifted. Even as it surrounded her it became cooler, and blacker. It was all around her, closing in, and she had to get out. If only she could unlock the door . . . but she'd dropped the key, and it was cold, so cold.

Loghain. Oh please!

If only Loghain would come find her . . .

Her vision cleared, and the barest hint of light was visible: a dim glow of nearly dead coals in the hearth. Gradually, in the soft glow of moonlight that streamed in her window, other things came into view: her armor on its stand; the trunk in the corner; a copy of the Chant of Light on her bedside table.

She released her hold on the bedclothes, and was able to take a proper breath. She wasn't underground; she was in her bedroom in Highever. There was no rock above her, no endless darkness that wanted to consume her. She wasn't buried beneath the earth, nor was she locked away in a damp dungeon cell.

She took a deep breath, and then another, and another, and waited for the terror to subside.

Then, the words the Divine had spoken to her echoed in her mind.

Surrounding you, so much darkness.

Darkness. She had always hated being in the dark.

It had been a long time since she'd dreamt of being trapped in the darkness, and had to claw her way back to consciousness. Years since she'd woken chilled and sweating, desperate to cry for help, but afraid of what might hear her if she made any sound. She thought she'd left these dreams behind.

Even as she waited for her heart to stop racing, a new fear took hold of her. The fear that this was not merely her old nightmares returning, but something new entirely.

The darkness and the cold were familiar, memories of being locked away in a dungeon cell. But other things were not. The weight of rock above her, and a pulse that beat steadily, like waves that pounded on the shore far away out of sight, or the slow beat of a heart. A scent that stung her nostrils and brought tears to her eyes, like ashes and overripe fruit.

A song, achingly beautiful, until the final notes turned sour.

Finally, a rasping voice, deep and resonant, not heard with her ears, but as if it spoke directly into her head. A voice whose words had been mostly unclear. Listen, it had said, but then there were only garbled syllables, harsh and hissing, empty of meaning. Nothing she could parse, nothing that sounded like any language she'd ever heard before.

Not until the last. The very last words still rang in her memory.

Help me.

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Many thanks to my wonderful beta readers: Psyche Sinclair, Sehnsuchttraum, and AmandaKitswell.

Welcome, everyone, to Book Two!

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