The corridor reached a ledge that looked down onto a wide cavern, deep and bathed in a pale, sickly light. They were in an excellent position for observation - out of sight unless someone (or something) looked directly up at them.

Upon seeing what was down there, Anders had time to really, really hope nothing did that.

The cavern was full of corpses. Piles of them. The stench was overwhelming. At first, he couldn't make out if there was anything else - the tear in the veil let light through, but it also distorted the air and details were difficult to distinguish. Gabrielle nudged him and pointed to the corner of the cavern, where a dark hole in the wall indicated another entrance. A slow, burdened figure appeared, carrying another corpse which it added to the pile already heaped in the cavern. Anders flicked his eyes over the remaining area and caught the edges of similar movement from two other entrances. They were collecting corpses from the deep road and bringing them to where the veil was at its thinnest.

The moving figures were darkspawn, he was certain of it. Genlocks, from their short stature.

"What are they doing?" he heard Neria breathe next to him.

Nothing good, he thought to himself. Corpses so close to a tear in the veil - there was every chance they would be possessed by demons seeking entrance into the waking world.

Every chance - or perhaps that was the intention? Someone - something was gathering the corpses here, there was no doubt about that. He chewed on a fingernail, suddenly nervous.

"Does the phrase 'army of undead' occur to anyone else here?" Anders asked. "Those corpses are vessels waiting to be filled with demons from the fade. Someone wants to flood the deep roads with the walking dead."

"Who?" Neria asked.

He pondered. "A blood mage? Maybe? But they usually don't have the power to tear the veil. Not to this extent, anyway."

"There's no way of telling how long the veil has been torn for," Neria said. "It could have happened years ago."

Anders shook his head. "We would have felt it. I've been this far down before once or twice."

"What can we do?" Gabrielle asked. "We can't just leave them here."

"We can fireball the lot of them," Neria said. "That would make it difficult for them to rise as an army."

He looked at her. She had a fierce expression on her face that reminded him of Pounce when he'd been threatened. A big explosion. Lots of fire and destruction. "Sounds good to me," he said.

"Wouldn't that only delay things?" Garic said. "There's Maker knows how many corpses down here. We need to find out why they're doing this. And if we fireball them whoever is doing this will know we're onto them."

"If we leave them there's a chance there'll be an army of undead at the Vigil's gate tomorrow morning," Anders said. "We need to get rid of these ones now while we have the chance."

Garic shrugged. "If you say so, boss," he said. "But we're going to attract the attention of every darkspawn in the deep roads."

He looked at Neria. "We might be calling on your hasting abilities again," he said. "I can firestorm the cavern, but we'll need to make a quick exit afterwards."

She nodded. He looked at Gabrielle and Garic. It was going to be a harrowing retreat through the roads. They were mostly fresh, but he worried that their reserves had been debilitated over the past few weeks from the dreams. He didn't doubt their abilities, but if it came to a straight up fight against superior numbers they would be in trouble.

"Ready?" he asked them. They nodded. "Then stand back."

He gathered his mana reserves and concentrated. Firestorm was a complicated spell, and draining, but they needed the sustained heat it would produce rather than the more simple fireball if they were to destroy the corpses. Just reducing them to fleshless skeletons wouldn't be enough. Demons possessed them just as readily as they did the freshly dead.

I'm going to pay for this, he thought to himself.

He focused his will through his staff - the volcanic aurum thrumming with his power. He would have to make this the most powerful casting he possibly could. He threw back his head, letting the spell course through him, feeling the familiar wild joy building up - that feeling he'd never been allowed to use while in the Tower. Boundaries - he had always hated them. As the power reached a crest so intense as to be almost sexual, he felt something - a presence, malignant and powerful, take note of him with an appraising eye. As he let the spell release, together with the clean thrill of success he felt a chill of foreboding.

The cavern exploded with flame and he sank to his knees, gasping for air. He felt Garic's hands on his shoulders, helping him to his feet. "Ser, we need to go."

He nodded once, feeling light headed. Neria's spell hit then and the lightheadedness turned to a rush not unlike the feeling he got from drinking too many lyrium potions in one go.

"Wow," he said softly. "Headrush. I should do that more often."

"Sometime when we're not about to be swamped by darkspawn," Neria said, tugging on his sleeve.

They started to run.

Sure enough, almost immediately after they started moving, Gabrielle reported movement from the darkspawn. "Only one group, so far," she said. "But there are at least twenty of them."

"They'll gather more," Garic said as they ran. Anders didn't have the energy to respond. They would need to reach the keep and rally the rest of the wardens. He hoped Sigrun didn't dress him down for stirring them up.

He thought of the number of corpses who had been in the cavern. No, he thought. We did what we had to. Better an army of darkspawn than an army of darkspawn and corpses. If Neria could sustain her haste they should be back at the keep within a day - at least a day ahead of the darkspawn, enough time for the wardens to arrange a defense.

If he could just keep up the pace.


There was a hammering at the gates - the warden code. It was the fourth time this morning. All of the recent groups were returning - reporting darkspawn on the move towards the keep. Sigrun had been waiting for this final group, hoping that they had some sort of idea what exactly had caused the sudden rush. Nathaniel's group had reported that the 'spawn were at least a day away, and coming from the direction Anders had gone. She was gripped by worry - the blond mage was a pain in a lot of ways, but his talents and support had been invaluable to her in the past year, and the thought of losing him to the 'spawn had her sword arm twitching and her legionnaire's heart aching.

It should be her down there. She'd had her funeral. She was dead. Logically she knew she could do more against the darkspawn as warden commander than she ever could as one legionnaire, but every now and then she'd look at a warden and see the face of one of her dead companions and realise that she had forsaken her oath.

She was a surfacer now.

The gate guards opened the door and she let out a huge sigh of relief. Anders, Garic, Neria and Gabrielle were there. Alive. Anders gave her his customary cheery grin, before collapsing face down in the doorway. The little elf mage, Neria, immediately crouched down next to him, although looking at her Sigrun was surprised she hadn't collapsed the same way Anders had.

All four of them had deep, dark circles under their eyes and looked more drained than the other groups had.

"Gabrielle?"

The elf rogue saluted. "Commander. Darkspawn on the move to the keep."

"I'm aware, warden," Sigrun said. "What happened?"

"A tear in the veil," Neria said, from next to Anders. "There was a tear in the veil. Something was gathering corpses to be possessed - we had to burn them or there would be more than darkspawn coming for us."

"Commander, there are at least fifty darkspawn coming up behind us," Gabrielle said. "Have the other groups reported back?"

"They checked in not long ago," Sigrun said. "Same reports as you gave, leaving aside the details about the veil."

"Anders can tell you more," Neria said. "But he needs rest. We had to haste it all the way here to stay ahead of the spawn. He's exhausted."

"Understood," Sigrun said. She nodded to two of the gate guards, who secured the gate and gathered Anders up to take him to his quarters.

"Is the keep prepared?" Gabrielle asked.

"We're in the process," Sigrun said as they walked towards the keep. "Just waiting for your group to come back before we set traps in the closest corridors. It's a good thing we spent so long sealing all the other exits - there really isn't any other way they can get at us. Should be a straightforward slaughter at the gate."

Gabrielle nodded. "Good," she said.

"You the rest of your group should get some rest, not just Anders," she said, stopping and placing her hand on Gabrielle's arm. "The rest of us can handle this."

The rogue nodded, looking ahead to the guards carrying the human mage.

Garic came up next to her. "They were both amazing, Commander," he said. "Two of the most powerful mages I've ever seen. Anders completely destroyed those corpses - he used all of his mana reserves, but he still managed to get back to the keep." He chuckled good naturedly. "It's a damn good thing that boy never did become a malificar - the templars would never have caught him. And Neria sustained haste for an entire day without stopping - you wouldn't think such a little body could hold so much. We wouldn't have made it back without them, ser. And you'd probably be facing an army of walking dead."

She smiled at the ex-templar. "I get Anders is talented," she said dryly. "Why else do you think we've put up with him for so long? If only we could teach him to be less..."

"Flippant?"

"I wouldn't put it that way, Garic. But something of the sort, yes. And I'm glad Neria is shaping up well. We need more mages. That damn rebellion and the number we lost during the blight has left a gaping hole in the Ferelden wardens. Five mages? Out of nearly two hundred wardens? It's ridiculous."

"Why won't Orlais send more?" Garic said, looking at Gabrielle. The elf frowned.

"Orlais is... protective of its mages," she said softly. "Our chantry - it is more powerful than yours. We have more mages, yes, but we also have many more apostates. The templars are more numerous and tend to..."

Garic raised an eyebrow. "Smite first and ask questions later?"

Gabrielle gave one of her rare smiles. "Something of that nature, yes."

"Maybe we should send an expedition there," Sigrun said, frowning. "Offer amnesty to your apostates and bring them back as wardens."

Gabrielle looked shocked. "I do not think the Empress would be very happy about that, Commander."

She grinned up at the elf. "I'm kidding," she said. Only partly, she thought privately. Anders had proved that some apostates made excellent wardens. "But it is a real problem." She sighed. Another real problem. One that she had no solution for. Well, at least Nate was handling the nobles well these days. She hadn't had to face a court hearing for months. "Get, you two," she said to Gabrielle and Garic. "You need to rest. You're out of this battle for now."

The two wardens bowed deeply to her and departed. She stood for a moment in the courtyard of the keep, looking up at the statue of Andraste. Humans and their gods. She didn't understand them. Why worship someone so patently uninterested in you? It didn't make any sense to her.

She fingered the duster mark on her cheek and sighed. She didn't know why Miranda had landed her with this job, but she was going to do it, and do it well. The keep would not fall to darkspawn under her command.

She started back up to her study.