She walked into an incredibly large cavern. The lights were so bright, it took her a moment for her eyes to adjust. She heard their whispers.

"Darkspawn," she hissed softly, "And a lot of 'em."

Alistair glanced at her and nodded. "Sounds like an army."

She said nothing as they peered out over a ledge to the hundeds of thousands of darkspawn that moved far below them. They held so many torches, she could pick out all of the hundreds of ogres in the mass form.

As soon as she heard him, the Archdemon launched himself above them and landed on the bridge a few yards away from them. Her comanions crouched as low as they could, and she protected her mind from his searching telepathic grasp. He roared, spitting purple curropted flames as he shouted battle cries and orders. The darkspawn below answered with cheers and their movement suddenly seemed like water as they moved on.

The Archdemon lifted his wings and sent out a final battle cry and lifted off the damaged bridge.

Zevran touched her shoulder lightly and she jumped. "You alright? You look pale," he said.

"The Archdemon," she answered shakily, "He's getting ready to attack. Zevran, we have to get out of here and get to the surface."

"Not until we find Branka," Oghren objected. She looked to Alistair for some help, but he watched as the Archdemon flew up and out of the cavern.

She was about to say something when she felt something tugging at her mind. A nudge. A simple whisp that she should have ignored. But it felt…. wrong. Evil.

You know that I have him, a voice echoed in her mind. Her eyes widened, and got a mental picture of Tamlen with black skin, no hair, and his eyes were dead.

Zevran grunted and she realized he was struggling to hold her up. "Maker," he gasped, "You almost collapsed! What happened?"

She knew she was shaking visibly. The evil whisp had left, but she couldn't get that picture of Tamlen out of her mind.

"Nothing," she said, taking a shaky step forward, and past Alistair, who was watching her with great concern. "Let's just get this over with."
~~~