The Deep Roads really were deep. Dark and deep. Alistair was sorry he had to be here. He was not afraid of the dark, but he was befuddled – why was he here already? His Calling was many years away...wasn't it? There were too many things he had to do before descending into the pits. There was a kingdom to run, his daughters to raise, another wee one on the way, and the love and adoration of his entire country to bask in. Everything he hoped and dreamed of in his life had become true. Even his wife had begun to love him back.
Their relationship began with rivalry and underhandedness and spite. She bore him their first daughter before they began to truly enjoy each other's embrace. Even so, now he was fond of his wife...but the circumstances in which he and she were married still rankled. The one person that he had willingly given his heart to had stabbed him in the back. The woman he had thought of as his heart's blood dickered with the Queen – using him as a bargaining chip – and struck a deal without his knowledge.
Elissa would not be a part of the deal. That hurt the most.
After Alistair and Anora's much-anticipated Royal wedding, the newly-appointed Warden Commander went to Amaranthine, and the Vigil...and afterward, she disappeared. He never figured out where she went. It was something he realized he didn't care one whit about. He decided he didn't want to look for Elissa. He was happy. He never thought it possible, but he found that Anora made him happy.
Had made him happy, that was. He had to leave Anora behind.
Now he was here in the Deep Roads to face the end.
It seemed like he walked the Deep Roads for days, never once coming across a single Darkspawn. It was odd, to say the least. The Blight ended less than five years ago...and even if that were the case, the Horde should have filled these cavernous halls from end to end.
Nevertheless, the erstwhile King of Ferelden walked unimpeded. He foraged for fungus and hunted Deepstalkers for food; he siphoned moisture from the damp walls to slake his thirst. He was here to perish, perhaps, but he refused to die of thirst or starvation.
Some three days after he began his final journey, Alistair felt stirrings above his head and beneath his feet, stirrings that bespoke of Darkspawn activity. He heard the Horde's song in his head. It was maddening, but he had endured worse during the Blight, when every bush hid a Genlock and every single gutted out homestead housed a Shriek or four.
He listened. He listened for the Darkspawn, and followed their call.
The day after the Horde spoke up, a new voice joined the cacophony. He had no idea what it could possibly be. He wondered: could it be a Broodmother...or perhaps a sentient Darkspawn?
Elissa had sent word to Denerim on just that issue, some few months after she had taken the position as Warden Commander. She and her new recruits had found a small faction of intelligent Darkspawn. He could hardly believe it, himself. A smart Hurlock...preposterous, really.
After Amaranthine fell, one of her recruits – the apostate that accompanied her to the Mother's Lair – was called to the Circle to give a lecture on the nature of intelligent Darkspawn. The Architect, as the leader of the intelligent Horde had decided to call itself, was born sentient and possessed a mind that could reason and make decisions and feel emotion. This obviously raised quite a stir throughout the magical and the intellectual worlds alike. The mage, a tow-headed Anders from Ferelden's own Circle, was honored by his old colleagues and asked to stay on.
The apostate from the Anderfels disappeared after giving his lectures. After all the things the rogue mage must have witnessed, Alistair wasn't too surprised.
This Architect assisted Elissa and her new Warden gang against the new and improved Mother. She managed to spit out quite a few intelligent Darkspawn before Elissa and her Wardens defeated her forever. After Elissa returned to Amaranthine, the new Warden-Commander disappeared for good. He told himself time and time again that he didn't care. He almost believed it, himself.
Maybe she had come to the Deep Roads first. That was a cheery thought. Maybe she was already digesting in some Ogre's belly...or even better, he'd stumble across Elissa's moldering carcass somewhere between here and his own death, her rotting, liquefying flesh seeping into the dank earth beneath her body. Or maybe all that would be left was her bones, the flesh picked clean by foraging insects or Dragonlings or even a wandering, hungry Genlock.
He decided that it might be in his best interest to put that line of thought out of his head – he was going to die, sure, but why make these last few days or hours (...or minutes, not to put too fine a point on it) of his life gloomy? He concentrated on the Horde's song
And just who did Elissa roger when she was in Amaranthine, Alistair? What new toy did she find to play with?
and on putting one foot in front of the other
Was it the smarmy mage with the ready mouth and even readier libido, or the stoic archer that couldn't keep his eyes to himself?
and on dying well...or as well as he could, at the hands of the Darkspawn Horde that waited for him.
Maybe – maybe it was her Senechal...or one – or more! – of the Amaranthine guardsmen...
He pressed his hands to his ears, as if to keep his aching brains from shooting out in a gout of malefic thought and gray matter. "Stop it," he said to his mind as it gibbered at him. He stumbled to the edge of the hallway, and leaned against it.
She didn't want you, did she, 'Your Highness'?
"Stop it!"
Thankfully – mercifully – the capering, gamboling voice in his head fell silent. So did the noises of the Horde. They waited for him, now. He could sense it. They waited for him to arrive. Where were they...? Perhaps they congregated where this rocky hallway ended. He could see how this hallway fanned out and opened into a cavernous room, where he could see filtered, eldritch light beam from the imperfections in the donjon's damaged ceiling. Perhaps this signaled the end of his journey.
He crouched, trembling, against the dank cavern wall. He took a slow, deep breath, straightening his legs until he stood solidly on his own two feet. With a calmness that came from years of training his mind and body, he nodded once to himself and stepped lightly through the hallway's opening.
Yes. They were there, waiting...waiting and milling about. They had nothing to bind them into their hive mind anymore, now that the Archdemon was gone. Nonetheless, they noticed him there, and began moving toward him as one, meeping and shrieking and roaring in the damp gloom.
He hefted his longsword and Duncan's shield. He knew this was the end, but he'd be buggered if the Horde thought he was going to go down without a fight.
"Yesssssss...be angry. We love that. It seasons the meat."
This new intrusion startled Alistair so profoundly that he dropped Duncan's fine shield and whirled toward the sound of this new voice. He rested his eyes on the one who spoke, and – surprisingly – threw his hands up in the air. "It figures."
Elissa scowled at him, her wasted cheeks writhing over the bones in her skull. "Jiggered, are you?"
He dropped into an en garde posture, the point of his sword juddering in the oily light that filtered through the ceiling. "No, Elissa. I knew you'd come to a bad end eventually, we all do...but why are you still alive?"
"I never said I was," she said slowly. I breathe, and I feed. I live, perhaps...but not as I once did." Her eyes trailed down his still-powerful body. She raised her countenance to his, her lips spreading in a frightful grin full of filthy, broken teeth. "You still look great, Alistair...delicious, even."
The thing that stood before Alistair wasn't precisely Elissa, not anymore. To see her much-beloved face in a state of mindless hunger broke his heart as surely as a Darkspawn dagger through his ribcage. In the moments that followed, he almost wished that was what ended him.
A burly Hurlock's greatsword sliced through open air to tear his chestplate buckles from their seats. The Hurlock in question bellowed in Alistair's ear, causing it to ring in a further maddening way. The plate dropped with a clang to the ground at his feet. One of the tiny Genlocks rushed him, then, and plunged a serrated dagger into his underbelly. It flicked its wrist with an almost audible snap, unzipping its prey's guts quite efficiently.
His longsword dropped and forgotten, Alistair stood before the hateful, grinning ghoul Elissa had become, his eyes questioning her motives even as his intestines uncoiled like a grisly party favor between his fingers. He wobbled on his feet, made an almost exquisite noise of surprise and excruciation, and dropped to his knees.
"Maker...Elissa, help me!" Alistair raised one hand to his long-lost lover. His arm was immediately seized. There was a momentary spray of dazzling pain – a great sheet of white-hot agony – and then there was nothing. He tried to snatch his arm back from the Darkspawn that had confiscated it, before he realized he had no arm left to snatch back.
The Genlock that had eviscerated him dove head-first into the grisly pile of his guts and sank its teeth into a still-throbbing coil. It reared its head back, tearing a mouthful of Alistair's insides away with it. The Warden screeched wretchedly, knowing that this was meant to be but cursing his miserable fate anyway.
Parts of him were torn unceremoniously from his protesting body while other bits were subjected to the teeming mob's foul, diamond encrusted weapons or their sharpened teeth. As his armor and clothing were pulled from his body, he was slowly ripped apart. His quivering muscles were rent as the mindless throngs of Darkspawn pressed in for a meal. The Darkspawn peeled his hide back, his skin's nerve endings sizzling in a bath of his own blood. He was unmanned, an offense he had very little time to bemoan. The multitude tore his hair out by the roots, ripping patches of scalp out along with the double-handfuls of hair. He was mangled, lacerated, his ears filled with the cacophony of his own pain and the happy squeals of the freshly fed.
And then, Elissa appeared before him, her wasted face wearing a loathsome expression of ersatz pity. Her newly-made Horde friends vacated Alistair's broken form, making room for their ghoulish compatriot. She knelt before him, and ran her fingers through a slick spatter of blood on his cheek. She stuck her poxy, purplish-black tongue out and licked her fingers clean.
Elissa cackled as she raised her chitinous fingernails to Alistair's neck and tore his throat out. She dipped her head over the blood geyser, and drank deeply. The last thing Alistair saw with his dimming sight was Elissa, her face covered with his blood, as she said: "I was right...you are delicious."
The inebriated man in the spotty, wrinkled doublet screamed thinly, flailing his arms as he brought his head up from the wine-sodden wooden table. He took a shaky, watery breath, passing a trembling hand over his flushed face. He glanced around, his embarrassment overlaid by a veneer of cheap alcohol and rancid fear-sweat.
The patrons of the Hanged Man glanced at the drunken fool in the corner for a brief moment, then turned back to whatever had occupied them before Alistair had screamed himself awake...all except two patrons. Both gazed upon him with what appeared to Alistair as pity. He hated the dusky woman and pale, drawn man for their sympathy. He didn't want it.
"What the hell're you looking at, Pal?" Alistair said to the tow-headed man. "Piss off."
The two glanced at each other, the pathos evident in their loaded expressions. The pale man turned back to Alistair. "You...look familiar."
His swarthy companion nodded. "He's right. You are familiar. Who are you?"
"Nobody." Alistair ran his fingers through his tangled hair. "I'm nobody, not any more."
"Wait...I remember you," said the dark-skinned woman. "I met you and your lady-friend at the Pearl." She shook her head, as she took in his disheveled appearance. "What on Thedas happened to you?"
Alistair sneered at the woman. "Lady-friend...pssh. To the Void with my 'lady-friend'. I was disgraced, if you really wanna know."
She shrugged. "I don't really want to know, but I'm sure we're going to hear the entire sad story. If the sots in here speak the truth, we're never going to hear the end of your bellyaching now."
"Relax," said Alistair. He crossed his arms on the stained tabletop, and dropped his head on his forearms. "I'll shut up now. Not like anyone cares about what I think."
The woman pulled a sour face, and walked away. Her friend hung back, and Alistair sucked at his teeth in annoyance. "What?"
"You were a Grey Warden, too," said the man. "That's how I remember you."
Alistair raised his head, gazing blearily at the man. "I was, once." He inclined his head at the blond man. "So were you, mage. You reek of the Taint, you know. You escaped the Warden's clutches, then?"
A thin flush spread across the man's pale cheeks. "Maybe. What of it?"
He put his head down again. "You think you escaped, but you didn't. You never escape. Never. The nightmare never ends."