Stars Fade

by totallybursar

Shepard knows that destroying the Reapers will kill her. Trouble is, she's never been good at dying. The explosion of dark energy from the Crucible thrusts Shepard into a totally different universe. Post ME3 ending, DA2 Act 2 beginning. Please note that this is not a FemShep/F!Hawke fic. THIS STORY HAS RECENTLY BEEN EDITED TO ALIGN WITH GAME CANON REVEALED IN DA:I

21. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Shepard looked up from the book when she heard her name, her eyes scanning the dim area just beyond the pool of lamplight bathing the polished shelves around her.

She was in the Chantry library, where she'd been every day for the past three days. She'd developed a rather amazing headache that refused to abate, even with Anders' help, and her nose burned perpetually from something in the air. Dust mites, soot and incense, probably. And page after page of small, cramped, crabbed script…

Shepard was about to concede that her mind was playing tricks on her when the unfamiliar voice called again.

"Serah Shepard?"

Shepard closed the book with a leathery fwap sound. "Yes?"

A dim figure moved through the shadows outside the circle of light. Shepard expected it to belong to one of the Chantry brothers who periodically came to check on her.

She was wrong.

The figure was male, as she'd supposed from the voice, but it was not wearing the robes of the Chantry. He was human, with dark hair and dusky skin, and he bore a scar from the hairline just above his left temple to the line of his jaw, crossing over the edge of his left cheekbone. Shepard found the average Theodosian defied her attempts to determine age, but she guessed that the man was somewhat older than she was, perhaps nearer forty than thirty. His bearing was calm and assured.

No armor. No weapons. Could still be a threat.

It was background thinking, unconscious and unbidden. Shepard knew that she did it, and one part of her hated herself for it while the rest of her simply accepted it as a matter of course. Kirrahe had put it well, hadn't he? Our motto in STG is to always expect trouble. Failing that, to create trouble for someone else…

"Can I help you?" Shepard pushed back her chair and rose, trying not to wince as her joints popped from the long period of inactivity.

"Indeed you can," said the man. His voice held an accent Shepard couldn't place. "The Arishok wishes to speak with you, please."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "Aren't you a little short for a qunari?"*

The man's dark eyebrows lifted. "I did not realize there was a height requirement."

"And you said please. Qunari don't say please. They say now."

A faint smile lifted the corners of his wide mouth. "The antaam can be abrupt at times."

"Antaam?"

"The body of the qun. In common, you would say… army, perhaps."

Shepard folded her arms on her chest and rocked her weight to one heel. "Mind telling me who you really are?"

"Asa," the man responded simply.

"Yes. Helpful," Shepard said curtly. "Would that be the Asa, an Asa, or just plain Asa?"

"Yes." The edges of the man's eyes crinkled.

"Well, if you're not qunari, you've certainly gotten their infuriating lack of clarity down pat."

That won a fleeting smile from the man. "We do it deliberately."

Shepard snorted. "I'd gathered."

"I am Asa," the man continued. "You would call me a… healer, I suppose."

"So asa isn't really your name, any more than ashaad was the archer's name…" Shepard was more musing aloud than expecting an answer.

"True." The man tipped his head slightly. "Asa is who I am, not a meaningless string of syllables attached to my person."

"Must be difficult when there's more than one healer about," Shepard said shrewdly. "I won't even go into the difficulties posed by having several hundred infantry soldiers in the same place at the same time."

The man shrugged. "There are distinctions," he said. "Will you come?"

"The Arishok actually asked politely!" Shepard exclaimed. "Of course I'll come." She glanced down at the too-short breeches and tunic she wore - Hawke's castoffs - and hesitated. "I'll need to make a stop first, though."

"As you wish," Asa said.

Shepard rolled her shoulders. "You don't have to accompany me, you know. If you want, you can return and let the Arishok know I've agreed to meet with him."

"I was tasked with fetching you," Asa replied. "I will be expected to return with you."

Shepard's green eyes glinted as she moved past the qunari healer. "I see. So the please was a figure of speech. Your figure of speech, not the Arishok's."

Asa fell into place just behind her right shoulder. "A figure of speech, yes, but it was indeed his." The healer's eyes were a startling hazel, ringed with a green even deeper than Shepard's own. "You have made an impression, serah Shepard."

Shepard snorted again. "You know, you're the only qunari to use my name, meaningless string of syllables though it may be."

"I know. Among the antaam, you seem to have become known as the basra. You are a frequent topic of conversation - even more so than your friend serah Hawke."

"I suppose I should be flattered?"

"Yes," Asa agreed mildly. "It is not often that a bas merits such attention."

"You know, you people have a knack for being marginally offensive all the time." Shepard pulled at the heavy, ornate Chantry doors. "Most people only manage to flirt with it."

"There is little purpose in wasting time on those who would be willfully blind." Shepard could sense the shrug that went with the healer's words.

"I agree fully," she said pointedly. "And blindness comes in so many forms," she shot a glance over her shoulder. "For example, those who reject change because that's simply not how things are done."

"You really know very little about us," Asa said calmly. "Perhaps you should save your judgments until after your own eyes have been opened."

Shepard felt her hands bunch into fists. Argh. Fucking qunari!

She tried to bury her irritation, and sighed theatrically. "You know, I thought at first that this was a step forward. A polite request, an acknowledgment of my name, the courtesy to allow me to make myself presentable first… Now I see that nothing really has changed."

To her surprise, Asa chuckled. "More has changed than you know."

"If I asked you for an explanation, would you just give me some enigmatic bullshit answer?"

Asa seemed to consider this for a moment. "Probably, yes."

"I won't bother then."

---

Shepard crossed the floor of her apartment, making for the bedroom and the locked chest in which she kept Garrus and her armor. Isabela and Hawke had been the ones to select the chest, and the locks and various traps that Shepard now felt she needed to keep the equipment safe. Varric paid to keep Anders' clinic safe. Nobody was paying to keep Shepard's apartment safe.

She unlocked the chest and disarmed the traps, and began peeling off her tunic and breeches. She doubted there was any reason for modesty in front of the qunari healer.

"So, if it's not terribly offensive for me to keep harping on it, you don't appear to be like the rest of the qunari," she said, stepping one foot into her skinsuit.

"What gave it away?" Asa appeared to have a greater respect for privacy than the giants, and remained out in the small sitting room.

"The lack of horns and the fact that you're not even two meters tall, maybe?"

She heard the man's chuckle from the other room. "Not all qunari have horns, you know."

Shepard paused in pulling the armored underlayer over her shoulders. "Really? Are they all still gigantic, though?"

"Oh yes. That goes without saying." Again, Shepard could hear faint amusement in the other's voice.

"Given you weren't born qunari, were you converted by the sword, or by persuasion?" God, it was nice to have underwear between her and the skinsuit. She carefully zipped herself in, and began the tedious chore of assembling her hardsuit.

"I prefer to think it was thoughtful logic."

"And did thoughtful logic give you that scar?" Shepard grunted as she fastened the clamps between her chest and back plate.

"Bandits, three days' travel out of Kont-Aar," the healer acknowledged. "A qunari patrol found me, unconscious and bleeding heavily. Luckily, it was shortly after they found the bandits, so they had a pretty good idea what had happened."

"I suppose someone with healing magic rates pretty high on the, can we keep him? scale, even for qunari."

"I am Asa, not Saarebas," Asa said stiffly.

Oops. That hit a nerve.

"Okay," said Shepard, carefully. "The difference being?"

"I do not need to be collared."

Shepard slipped her feet into her boots and latched them. "What do you mean, collared?"

"I do not need to be chained to keep me from harming myself or others."

Oh. This again. Good to see that intolerance is universal.

"You don't use magic to heal?" she asked aloud.

Asa's voice still held an affronted tone. "I use medicine."

"Better than the medicine in Kirkwall, I hope?"

"Yes."

Shepard adjusted her greaves and pulled on her gloves, refastening her omni-tool in place. She stooped to retrieve Garrus from his nest in the chest, and swung the rifle over her shoulder, feeling it click into place.

Asa gave her a thoughtful look when she emerged from the bedroom. "Are your people blind to the threat of saarebas? Do your kind not chain them as well?"

"Where I come from, the people who have similar talents as your… saarebas are no different than anyone else. Some ignorant people fear them and are therefore intolerant of them, but things are improving."

"They are free?" The qunari healer looked shocked. "What of corruption?"

Shepard shrugged. "Where I come from, everyone's got the same potential to be an evil bastard. It isn't limited to biotics. Crazy's crazy."

"That's a foolish outlook," Asa frowned.

"Well, in almost two hundred years of study, we still haven't managed to isolate the evil bastard gene. Until we do, I'd rather just assume that we're all the same until proven otherwise."

"You would endanger the whole by assuming that all are equally harmless?" Asa demanded.

Shepard shook her head with a wry smile. "No. I just assume everyone's an evil bastard." She tilted her head. "Saves time."

The healer gaped at her.

Shepard jerked her head toward the door. "Come on. I wouldn't want to keep the Arishok waiting any longer than necessary."

---

Asa was silent for the rest of the journey to the dockside compound. Shepard supposed she'd been a bit rude, but come on, what would it take for these jackasses to see that locking people up because they were different was wrong?

Hundreds of years of struggle and war, usually.

Sometimes Shepard hated that she was a realist.

The Arishok was waiting for her in his library tent. Asa showed her only as far as the tent flap before excusing himself with a distracted air.

Damn. You probably shouldn't have alienated the one person you might have been able to pump for information about the qunari. Good move, Shepard.

The Arishok did not look up from a scroll he was studying as she entered.

"Basra," he intoned.

"Arishok."

"You have retreated within the Chantry's walls," the Arishok noted. "Why?"

Shepard strove not to show her surprise openly. "I've been studying in their library," she replied. "Why do you ask?"

His eyes left the scroll. "You seek certainty in the bas' Chant of Light?"

"No." Shepard's eyes were hard. "In star charts and the studies their scholars have made of the heavens."

He grunted and set the scroll aside, motioning for her to take her place opposite him.

"You once claimed you wished to learn of us, of the qun," he made an eloquent gesture with one hand. "Do you still?"

Shepard took her seat and propped her elbows on the table, lacing her fingers together tightly. She studied the giant over the top of them. "You are more highly advanced than the other races of Thedas," she said firmly. "I want… no, I need to know how much more. I will listen to anything you have to tell me."

She dropped her hands. "However, I should warn you right now that if you're thinking of trying to convert me to your philosophy, you're barking up the wrong tree."

He raised an eyebrow. "Barking up a tree?"

Shepard shrugged. "A figure of speech."

"Meaning?" the Arishok asked sharply.

"I'm not much of a believer. I don't do religion, or philosophy, or spirituality. I believe in the gun in my hand and not a lot else."

"Belief in the qun is not required," he rumbled. "Asit tal-eb. It is to be."

Shepard's brow furrowed. "It is to be what?"

"Existence is a choice. You may accept it, or deny it."

She cocked her head. "To be, or not to be: that is the question," she murmured.

"Yes." The Arishok mirrored her expression. "You speak this as if it is known wisdom."

"They're the words of a playwright, William Shakespeare. The play is called Hamlet."

"He speaks a truth," the Arishok said approvingly.

Shepard snorted inelegantly. "Hamlet was talking about suicide - about taking his own life - rather than just manning up and growing a pair!" She dropped her hand to her omni-tool and skimmed through files until she found the one she was after.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question," she quoted softly.

"Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles;

And by opposing, end them?

To die: to sleep;

No more, and by sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to…"

She let the file wink out. "That's not wisdom. That's giving up. You don't just roll over because life isn't all rainbows and sunshine." Her eyes blazed. "You fight. You fight until the day you die! And, if you're me, then I guess you get up and fight some more."

"I've wanted to give up. I've had the fight beat out of me so many times; been dead, or almost dead, or mostly dead, or somewhat dead so many times, and you know what? I can't. To be or not to be isn't the question. You are. No question at all."

The Arishok was watching her calmly as she ranted. When she finished, he spoke.

"You do not understand, basra," he said. "There is no struggle but the struggle of self. There is no mastery but the mastery of self. Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it."

With that, he held out one hand to her, as if in entreaty.

Shepard stared at it in confusion. "What?"

"Your arm."

"What about it?"

"I wish to see it."

Puzzled, Shepard held out her right arm.

The Arishok gave her a look that very clearly stated the other one, dumbass.

Hesitantly, Shepard extended her left arm.

The Arishok ran his fingers over the length of her armored forearm from elbow to wrist, and then over her hand to her fingertips. When he repeated the motion a second time, his fingers lingered on the omni-tool.

"It is an enchantment of some kind?"

Shepard shook her head, only belatedly realizing that the Arishok's attention was wholly fixed on her arm. She cleared her throat.

"No. It's a device. A machine."

The Arishok glanced up at her and turned one hand palm up, opening his fingers. The request was obvious.

Shepard met his eyes and held them for a long, long minute. Without breaking that contact, she slowly unfastened the 'tool and placed it in the giant's palm.

Her hands clenched into fists as his fingers closed over it.

The Arishok looked down at the 'tool, turning it over and over in his hands. His gently questing talons found the standby button, and the 'tool sprang to life.

Shepard half expected him to drop it, but the Arishok regarded it curiously. He seemed only mildly puzzled when he attempted to touch the holographic interface and his fingers passed through it.

"It responds to your touch alone?" he asked.

"Sort of," she hazarded. "The interface isn't keyed specifically to me." Shepard held up a hand and wiggled her fingers. "It responds to my gloves, because they have something embedded in the fingertips. It responds to my fingertips because I have something embedded in those as well. It's a common practice for people who use them routinely." She fought the urge to snatch the 'tool out of his grasp. "Here, though, I don't think anyone else could use it."

"It is… interesting." He returned the 'tool and regarded her intently as she replaced it on her wrist.

"This was not done lightly," he acknowledged.

Shepard's mind was too full of relief at the omni-tool's return to follow the Arishok's line of thought. "What?"

"You did not entrust it," he nodded to the 'tool, "lightly. I… thank you for allowing it."

"Without this," Shepard said quietly, unconsciously moving her left arm closer to her body, "there is no chance for me to get home." She paused. "There's not much chance anyway, but there's a world of difference between slim and none."

Those golden eyes continued to study her.

"And yet you allowed it out of your possession. Why?"

Shepard's eyes were frank. "Because, as a wise man once reminded me, life is a negotiation. To get, you have to give."

Without a word, the Arishok rose and strode to one of the bookshelves. His fingers removed a slim volume, and he returned to his seat, setting the book before her.

"You will be allowed to pass the gates, basra. If it is convenient, you will have access to some of the tomes here," he gestured with one hand, "under supervision."

He placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. "In return, you will answer my questions and respond to my summons without complaint."

Shepard's gaze was steely. "I will answer your questions and respond to your summons… within reason," she amended firmly.

The ghost of a smile tugged at the giant's lips. "Agreed. Within reason."

"This book contains the Cantos of the Qun, translated into your tongue. You will read it."

Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, Shepard was not oblivious to subtext. There was something special about the book, and not just because it held the tenets of his philosophy.

"Your personal copy?" she asked softly.

The massive head nodded slightly. "Yes."

Shepard picked it up carefully. "Thank you," she said sincerely.

The Arishok sat back and squared his shoulders. The motion was a dismissal, and Shepard knew it. She rose, holding the slender book protectively against her body.

"Panehedan, basra."

Shepard gave him a little nod. "Panehedan, Arishok."

---

"I really need to learn how to cook," Shepard complained, pushing at the unknown chunks in her bowl of stew with a wooden spoon. She looked up at Isabela. "How do you and Varric manage?"

Isabela smiled at her. "I get most of what I need out of a bottle, sweetness. I pick up the rest at food stalls in the bazaar."

Shepard grunted. "Where is Varric?"

The pirate shrugged. "He was out with Hawke earlier." She leaned her elbows on the bar and gave Shepard a slow, thoughtful look.

"What?" Shepard asked, spoon halfway to her mouth. "Did I spill all over myself?" She glanced down at her chest self-consciously.

"All those things you told us the other night…" Isabela said slyly. "How much of it was actually true?"

"All of it." Shepard tried not to think about the texture of the unidentified lumps as she put the spoon in her mouth and chewed resolutely.

"Come on," the pirate wheedled. "You can tell me…"

Shepard forced herself to swallow the half-chewed mouthful. "All of it," she repeated.

"So, then, how did you get here?" Isabela demanded. "You said there's no magic where you come from."

Shepard shook her head and pushed the bowl of stew aside. "I don't know. My guess is that the amount of dark energy released by the Crucible… the weapon… triggered the Citadel relay, and somehow, I ended up here."

She frowned. "Although, that would assume that there was another relay around here somewhere. Certainly somewhere in Thedas, and likely somewhere near Kirkwall."

Shepard idly tapped the spoon against the lip of the bowl. "Hmmm…" she hummed.

"I didn't understand a word of that," Isabela complained.

"What?" Shepard snapped out of her reverie. "Oh. Think of it this way: a relay is kind of like… riding a wave. It's a way of moving you from one place to another without all the tedious effort."

Isabela gave her a skeptical look.

"Look, I can't really explain it any better than that," Shepard argued. "Otherwise, I'm going to have to use words like mass effect field and faster than light travel and relativity, and you're going to give me that same look only a hell of a lot more intensely."

"And now you're thinking really hard," Isabela pointed out, suspiciously. "That can't be good."

"Actually, it might be very good indeed," Shepard replied. "If only Liara were here…"

"It doesn't look very good. You have that look that Hawke gets when she's about to do something just a little bit crazy." The pirate folded her arms sternly. "Trust me. I've been following that silly fool for years now. I know."

"Who's the more foolish; the fool, or the fool who follows her?" Shepard asked loftily.

"Is there profit involved somewhere?"

"Oh, just look at the pretty picture," Shepard said sourly, bringing up a picture of Jacob working out without his shirt on, courtesy of Kasumi.

"Oooh," Isabela brightened considerably. "Is this one of your crewmen?"

"One of my old team. Jacob Taylor." Shepard didn't bother to add that the man in question was soon to become a father. Hopefully soon to become a father.

"He looks like he could be part Rivaini," Isabela said thoughtfully.

"I thought you might appreciate him. He was a corsair for a while - kind of like a pirate, only secretly under the control of the Alliance military."

"Did the two of you ever…"

Shepard gave the pirate a stern look. "I didn't make it a habit to sleep with my squad," she said.

"Neither did I, but I have to admit that with yours it would be awfully tempting."

Shepard grinned. "You'll love this, then," she tapped quickly on the omni-tool, explaining as she went.

"After the incident in which I destroyed a relay - unfortunately destroying most of a star system as well - the Alliance grounded me and I was put in protective custody."

She held out her arm again. "This was my personal guard."

It was a vid she'd taken for Tali, after the latter had expressed admiration for the size of Vega's biceps. Though the lieutenant was not bare-chested, his tatty old Alliance tee left absolutely nothing to the imagination, except perhaps the extent of the blackwork tattoo that began just under his right ear, as he did reverse pull-ups at his workbench in the Normandy's shuttle bay.

Isabela's amber eyes narrowed in appreciation. "Your personal guard?"

"Hand picked and expressly assigned to keep an eye on me." Shepard chuckled richly. "Sometimes I think Vega was Anderson's way of trying to make up for the fact I was confined to a maximum security detention block for nearly six months."

"There you are!"

Shepard turned her head to see Hawke crossing the floor with Varric and Anders in tow.

"Who, me? Or Isabela?"

Hawke put her hands on her hips. "You, of course. I always know where to find Isabela."

"Hey!" Isabela protested. "I'm not always at the Hanged Man."

"Yes," agreed Hawke mildly. "Sometimes you're at the Rose."

"Exactly."

Shepard put her back to the bar and leaned against it. "So what's up?"

"It's not my fault," said Varric quickly.

Hawke gave him a brief glare, and turned back to Shepard, her face thoughtful.

"See? There it is," said Isabela. "That's the look."

"The look?" Shepard arched her brows.

"The one that means Hawke's about to do something crazy."

Anders sighed. "We're going into the Deep Roads again."

Shepard's forehead wrinkled. "Where?"

"Endless underground passages filled with darkspawn and all sorts of nasty creatures," the healer groaned. "I hate the Deep Roads. I left the Wardens so that I never had to go into the Deep Roads ever again, and this is going to be twice you've dragged me down there, Hawke."

Hawke tilted her head to one side. "I thought it was because they made you give up your cat?"

"That too," the healer sulked. "Poor Ser Pounce-a-lot."

"You named your cat Sir Pounce-a-lot?" Shepard asked in disbelief.

"What's wrong with Ser Pounce-a-lot?" Anders demanded.

Shepard shook her head. "Nothing. If you're under ten years old."

"Hey!"

The Spectre sighed, and turned back to Hawke. "Let me guess. You want me to go with you into these -quote- endless underground passages filled with all sorts of nasty creatures," she surmised.

Hawke gave her a bright smile. "It'll be an exciting adventure. You'll enjoy it."

---

"Why did you think I'd enjoy this little adventure again?" Shepard asked sourly as the four of them broke camp on their fifth day underground. The extended amount of time with thousands of tons of rock pressing down on them and dangers around every corner had put them all on edge.

"Because you like shooting things in the head?" Hawke suggested sweetly.

"I shoot things in the head because they need to die."

"Tell me you don't enjoy it."

"Maybe a little," Shepard conceded. "But that's still not a good enough reason for all this," she waved a hand vaguely.

Hawke sighed. "If I'd have known you were going to complain the whole time, I would have brought Fenris instead."

"Ladies," said Varric calmly, "much as the thought of the two of you ripping each other's clothes off is one of everyone's personal fantasies, could it wait until we're back in the Hanged Man and I have a pint of ale in my hand?"

"Shut up, Varric," said Anders wearily.

"Fine, Blondie. Don't come crying to me after the girls kill each other and we're left down here all by ourselves."

"Not by ourselves," Anders replied grimly. "Darkspawn coming."

It was not the first time that the former Grey Warden's ability had come in handy. Shepard cloaked and sprinted into flanking cover, sliding over a chunk of ruined masonry and dropping behind it as the first wave of the monsters appeared.

She took aim on the center of a hurlock - or was it a genlock? - forehead, let her breath ease from her lungs, and tightened her finger against Garrus' trigger. The creature dropped. Shepard lined up another shot, and swore under her breath. There were just too many of the damn things, and they were overrunning the squad's position. She popped out of cover long enough to fire an incendiary blast into a group of four who were threatening to overwhelm Hawke, cloaked again, and dashed around the darkspawns' left flank.

Shepard waded into the fray, wielding her omni-blade with as much precision as a scalpel. She couldn't afford wild, powerful swings, not when there were so damn many of them. For the second time in as many days, she wished that Fenris had accompanied them on this mission. The elf's massive great sword would really come in handy about now.

"Hawke," Shepard shouted, "position!"

She'd spent some time teaching the others standard clock positions, as well as the hand signals she commonly used when working in comm silence.

"On your four!" came the reply.

"Fall back," Shepard ordered.

"Are you su…"

"Fall back, Hawke!"

Shepard counted to three in her head, and dropped a ball of burning plasma practically at her own feet, pivoting and making a leaping dive out of the way as it detonated.

The blast rebounded on her shields, taking them down to two percent and scorching her backplate slightly.

The smell of burning darkspawn flesh filled the passage.

"Everyone okay?" Anders asked, coughing.

"I got a little nicked, I think," said Hawke off-handedly. Shepard saw bright blood staining the ground where the rogue stood, and rushed to Hawke's side just in time to catch the other woman as she swayed on her feet.

Hawke's right side was gashed open - Shepard thought she could see the faint whiteness of the rogue's lower ribs as the wound gaped with each movement. Anders rummaged in his pouch for a moment and withdrew a large bottle, uncorking it with his teeth and liberally dousing the wound with it. Hawke hissed loudly and began to swear.

Anders handed the bottle and cork off to Shepard, and his hands lit with the familiar aura of magic.

Shepard assayed a sniff at the mouth of the bottle and blenched as the smell assaulted her nose and sinuses like a blowtorch shoved up her nostrils. "What is this stuff?" she asked.

"One of the few good things I got out of being a Warden," Anders muttered. "It's a potion that helps neutralize dawkspawn blood."

The rend in Hawke's side knitted up under his fingers. "It can't remove the taint once it's in a person's blood, but pouring it over an open wound helps remove any trace of darkspawn blood that might contaminate it."

"Burns like anything, though," Hawke said from between clenched teeth.

"Better a little burning now than succumbing to the taint later," the healer replied tersely.

"You can't argue with that logic," Varric commented.

"How much further?" Shepard sighed. "Please tell me we're getting close."

Varric nodded. "We are. Should make it in a few hours."

"Good. Do you really think the dwarves are still alive?"

Anders shook his head. "They'd have to be really lucky. There are a lot more darkspawn here now than there were when we were here a few years ago." He retrieved his bottle from Shepard and replaced it in his pack.

The darkspawn reminded Shepard a little too much of the Reaper ground forces - grotesque warpings of humans and dwarves - except that they, at least, were entirely organic. And toxic.

"Their blood carries the taint. Come into too much contact with it, and the taint will seep into your blood. Once that happens, there is little that can be done," Anders had told her. "Some say that the Joining - becoming a Grey Warden - is a cure, but it's not. It's only a postponement of the inevitable."

Again, the similarities to indoctrination made Shepard shudder. But the darkspawn weren't the same level of threat the Reapers had been. Until something called an Archdemon came about, triggering a Blight, the darkspawn remained underground. Quick thinking and decisive action had been enough to halt a Blight before it could ravage more than a single country - unlike the Reapers, who easily decimated entire worlds. And conventional weapons were more than a match for the darkspawn. Shepard figured that, had the Theodosians possessed assault rifles and standard artillery units, Blights would practically be a thing of the past.

However, being stuck underground without assault rifles or standard artillery, vastly outnumbered by the twisted monsters, Shepard had to concede that the darkspawn were fourth in line behind Reapers, giant spiders, and rachni on the list of enemies she never wanted to fight again, just ahead of Phantom-class Cerberus troops and thresher maws.

A little over two hours later, the four of them passed the outer boundaries of the primeval thaig. As they entered a narrow corridor, more natural stone than worked masonry, Shepard gasped. Thick crystalline rivers of sparkling blue stone poured from the roof of the passage to the floor, bathing the whole area in glacial blue light.

"Holy shit," she whispered, pausing in the center of the passageway and turning slowly through 360 degrees. "It's… it's beautiful." Enraptured, she moved closer to one of the veins of stone, reaching out to touch it.

Anders' hand captured her wrist firmly. "Don't. Touch," he warned quietly.

Shepard shot him a puzzled frown over her shoulder. "Why? Is it radioactive?" She dropped her hand to her omni-tool, scanning the glowing, pale blue rock.

"It's lyrium," he answered. "And it does very bad things to humans."

Shepard had heard Hawke and her companions - particularly the mages - talk about lyrium before. But Shepard had always assumed the substance to be a drug - something compounded, not a naturally occurring mineral.

"But don't mages use lyrium?" she protested, glancing down at her omni-tool as its orange glow flickered through the scan.

"Yes. Refined lyrium," Anders replied. "The refining process is complex, and renders lyrium safe for handling. The ore itself is… can be… fatal."

"Hmmm," Shepard hummed thoughtfully.

"We should move quickly through here," Anders added meaningfully. "This much lyrium can have an effect, even without any of us coming into direct contact with it."

They had no sooner emerged from the far side of the passageway than Hawke's squad caught sight of a figure at the foot of a heavy, iron bound door. The dwarf was on his knees, head bowed, fists clenched and pressed tightly against his thighs. It was an attitude of utter despair.

At the scuff of a boot against stone, the dwarf looked up wildly. In an instant, his face passed from frightened to deliriously hopeful.

"Are you one of Yevhen's sons?"

"Messere Hawke?!" he gasped. "Please help me! My brother Merin - Iwan locked him in with the darkspawn." His face twitched with anger. "He sealed the door, left me here, and bolted for that passage." The dwarf threw his left hand out savagely. "He's gone mad. All he cares about is that damned sword."

Hawke glanced back at Varric. "Last time we were here, we picked this place clean," she said, frowning. "What's your brother looking for?"

"Iwan called it the Heartdrinker. He says it's the masterwork of an ancient smith from this thaig." The dwarf's hands clutched at each other. "He bought a book from one of the Orzammar caravans. It had the location of the sword - or at least to the golems who guard it."

Hawke sighed theatrically. "Another greedy dwarf," she said wryly. "You think he took lessons from Bartrand?"

The dwarf's pale grey eyes were anguished. "Maybe I should have seen this coming," he said bitterly. "Iwan has been obsessed with that thing. He wouldn't tell us about the sword, but I never imagined he'd leave us to rot."

"This is getting just a little too familiar, isn't it?" Varric said.

Well, Hawke," Anders asked, cocking his head to one side. "Which will it be? Merin, or the sword?"

"I don't care about the sword," the dwarf begged. "Please, save my brother!"

"Get back to the surface," Hawke ordered. "It looks like I have a date with the darkspawn."

"He's on the other side of that wall," the dwarf pointed over his shoulder. "You need to find a way to reach him."

"Please," he repeated softly. "Come tell my father when you have news."

With a long look back over his shoulder at the sealed doorway, the dwarf made his way back down the passageway they'd just come from.

Shepard ran a quick ladar scan with her omni-tool. "Behind that rubble on the left looks to be a corridor that runs parallel to this one," she said. "We might be able to find a connecting doorway or room somewhere further along."

Hawke nodded, and picked her way through what appeared to be a partial cave in of the corridor's roof. Shortly beyond the rubble, the passage became once again smoothly worked stone.

"Let's hope the rest doesn't decide to come down," Anders muttered sourly, glancing up at the squared off blocks of the ceiling.

They followed the corridor for maybe fifty meters before it opened out into a rectangular room. From a ruined opening in one wall came the sound of steel on steel, and the wordless growls and howls of darkspawn.

Hawke broke into a sprint.

Merin was a tough little bastard, Shepard gave the dwarf credit. Back to a wall, the dwarf was holding off a half-dozen darkspawn, but it was clear he was near exhaustion. All it would take was a moment's lapse…

She hurled an incendiary blast at the back of the group, setting two of the monsters alight and rather effectively drawing the attention of the others. A bolt of sparkling energy burst from Anders' staff as the mage leveled it at the darkspawn, freezing one of the monsters completely solid. Hawke took advantage of the creature's immobile fragility and leapt, bringing the hilts of both daggers down on its chest, shattering it.

Calmly, Varric picked off the two flaming darkspawn. "Shepard, Hawke, to the left!" he called, pausing to slot an explosive bolt in place.

Shepard groaned. Varric was proving to be oddly resistant to using clock positions.

Hawke, who had pivoted to lash out at another darkspawn with her heel, called back, "Mine, or yours?"

"Just duck!"

The rogue grinned and rolled away as Varric set Bianca to his shoulder and fired. The explosive bolt took the emissary just entering through a doorway in the back of the room squarely in the chest. It looked down at the shaft just as the bolt erupted in fire. To be sure, Shepard flung a blast into the inferno, scooping up a buckler dropped by one of the darkspawn and using it to bash a large hurlock in the face, burying her omni-blade into his abdomen.

Behind the scorched remains of the emissary, another group of darkspawn were pushing their way through the open doorway. Taking advantage of the chokepoint, Varric sent shot after shot into the creatures, stopping only when Hawke swept in with her daggers to finish them off.

After the last of the monsters had fallen to Hawke's blades, Anders moved to the exhausted dwarf's side, checking him for injuries.

"You're one lucky dwarf," the healer said, when Merin proved to have little more than shallow wounds. As he had done with Hawke, Anders bathed the wounds in the caustic-smelling potion, and closed them with magic.

"I know you're exhausted," Hawke told the dwarf, who sagged against the wall, "but if you can push yourself just a little further, you should be able to catch up to your brother Emrys. He's on his way back to the surface."

"Iwan?" The name dropped from the young dwarf's weary lips like lead.

"Your brother said he bolted further into the thaig. We'll go after him next."

Merin nodded, and pushed himself off the wall. "Try to bring him back safely," he said. With an obvious effort of will, the dwarf marshalled what little strength remained, and set off at a shuffling trot.

"His brother abandons him to the darkspawn and he still worries about us bringing him back safely?" Anders wondered aloud.

"Maybe he wants to throttle Iwan slowly himself," Varric offered. "I know I wanted to wrap my hands around Bartrand's neck."

"You people make me glad I was an only child," Shepard announced, as Hawke began picking the lock on a chest in the corner.

"Shouldn't we try to pick up the spare?" the Spectre added after a moment.

"What, Iwan?" Hawke asked, grinning to herself as the lock popped open. "We'll catch up with him soon enough. Sooner, if the darkspawn have anything to say about it."

She withdrew a leather bag and a few miscellaneous items that she tucked away into a belt pouch. A small vial she held up to the light, then unstoppered. "Lyrium," she murmured, tossing it across the room to Anders, who caught it neatly. Deftly, the rogue picked open the knots holding the bag closed, and tipped its contents into her palm. Colored fire glinted in her palm as several large, uncut gemstones tumbled out.

Varric picked one up and snorted. "Why can't people leave behind the good ones?" He selected another, holding it up and squinting at it. "These are all cloudy or blemished."

"Ahh," he murmured, snatching up a third. "Except this one…" He took it closer to the torchlight and examined it closely. "This one should be worth something." He handed it to Hawke, who nestled it into a pocket before tipping the stones back into the bag.

"Wait," said Shepard, as a thought occurred to her. "Are those sapphires?"

"Some," admitted Varric. "A few rubies, and a diamond as well."

Shepard held out her hand. "Would you mind?"

Hawke and Varric exchanged glances. "They're not worth much," Varric warned, as Hawke shrugged and tossed Shepard the pouch.

"To me, they're worth quite a bit," Shepard said smugly. "I hadn't thought about it before, but I should be able to use them to repair my armor."

Anders tapped her shoulder guard lightly. "This is made out of gemstones?" he said with disbelief.

Shepard shook her head. "But aluminum oxide makes a decent ceramic."

"Alu-what?" Anders' forehead wrinkled.

"Corundum," she clarified. "Rubies and sapphires."

"If you say so," Anders said doubtfully.

"And the best part is, the corundum doesn't have to be gemstone quality. I just need the mineral itself, to use as raw material for the repairs. My omni-tool should be able to do the rest."

Shepard tucked the pouch away.

Anders put his head on one side. "Why do I have the sudden feeling that there's going to be a rash of gemstone robberies across Kirkwall?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny your question at this time," Shepard replied, face going wooden.

"Let's go," Hawke motioned to the ruined passageway with a jerk of her head. "Iwan shouldn't have gotten too far ahead of us."

---

He hadn't.

The dwarf's corpse was only a few passages away from where he'd callously left his younger brother to die at the hands of the darkspawn. That Merin had survived that fate while Iwan had not was… darkly ironic, in a way that made Shepard's mouth quirk slightly. Not in humor, exactly - bastard though he undoubtably was, not even Iwan deserved to be ripped open the way the conniving young dwarf had been - but in what Shepard had to admit was an appreciation of the universe's perverse nature.

"Is that a golem control rod in his hand?" Varric asked.

Shepard hunkered down beside Hawke, who was already sorting through the dwarf's pockets. "Looks like a limestone dildo to me," she muttered.

"Dildo?" Hawke raised an eyebrow at her.

"Don't ask. It was a tasteless comment," Shepard sighed.

Hawke looked from the Spectre's face to the object still clutched in the dwarf's outflung hand. She tilted her head to one side, and a grin suddenly infused her face. "Ahhh," the rogue said, nodding sagely. "I suppose we should be thankful Isabela isn't here."

"Why is that?" Anders asked innocently. His eyes followed Hawke's, and he suddenly flushed to his hairline. "Oh."

And if the universe's aforementioned perversion was ever called into question, the fact that there were four people clustered around a mangled corpse, currently only interested in the fact that said corpse was holding a vaguely phallus-shaped object, seemed proof positive.

Varric was the one to break the oddly fraught moment, stooping slightly to pull the thing from Iwan's cold hand.

"What?" he said irritably, as the other three gave him slightly bemused looks. "Rivaini isn't here, and I'm not going to oblige with any suggestive comments. It's bad enough that my imagination has already supplied them."

With that, he dropped the rod into a pocket of his leather coat and glanced at Hawke. "I'm assuming you want to continue and try to find this sword that was worth betraying his kin for?"

Hawke nodded. "We might as well continue a little farther. I don't know that I want to stay down here until we find it, mind you," she added. "But given what we found last time… a little farther couldn't hurt."

"Famous last words," said Anders sardonically.

They climbed a flight of steps, negotiated a short landing and a further set of steps, and Varric snorted with unamused laughter.

"So close. Fate's a real bitch sometimes," he said.

Poised at the top of the final flight of steps was a huge, hulking… thing of stone. It was human-shaped only in the very basest of senses - the thing had a head and shoulders, and arms with hands and legs with feet - but it was crude and clumsy.

A line of similar statues stood at attention along the wall - perhaps four or five of them.

Hawke shot Anders a wickedly amused glance.

"Not a word," said the healer shortly. He pointed a finger at Varric. "That goes for you, too."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Blondie," smiled Varric.

"I'm missing something," Shepard concluded, watching the exchange.

"And thank the Maker for that," Anders avowed. "If you haven't yet been subjected to Isabela's friend fiction, I strongly suggest you keep it that way."

Shepard shrugged and eyed the statue before them. "Golems?" she deduced.

"Exactly," Varric nodded, withdrawing the stone dildo and handing it over to Hawke. "Give it a try."

Hawke looked down at the thing in her hands, clearly torn between all the jokes clamoring for attention and seriousness.

To Shepard's surprise, seriousness won out.

"How am I supposed to know how an ancient dwarven device works?" Hawke demanded. She waved the stone phallus at Shepard and Anders threateningly. "And not a word out of either of you," she growled.

"You think all dwarves are born with the knowledge or something?" Varric protested. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Giving the three of them a dark scowl, Hawke proceeded to the first statue and poked at it with the rod.

Anders stepped forward gingerly, holding up both hands placatingly when Hawke rounded on him, rod at the ready. Almost apologetically, he placed his hand over hers, the faintest of auras limning his fingers.

The rod suddenly lit with an answering glow.

"Well, put me in a dress and call me the Divine…" Varric wondered softly. "Andraste's knickers, Blondie. How did you know that would work?"

"I didn't," the healer admitted. "But dormant enchantments can sometimes be activated that way."

"Huh."

A network of fine blue lines began to light up on the statue before Hawke, and the thing moved with the grinding sound of stone on stone. Shepard felt the flagstones beneath her boots tremble as the golem's massive feet thudded against them.

That thing's got to be a couple thousand kilos, easy.

Curiously, she stepped around the golem, sweeping her left hand along the thing's broad chest, closely examining the areas of articulation, looking for seams or other evidence of its construction.

Shepard glanced down at the data on her omni-tool, and frowned.

That can't be right. How the hell do you animate solid stone?

The golem stood quietly now, in the attitude of someone awaiting further instruction. Hesitantly, Shepard reached out with one hand and ran her fingers over the golem's elbow, searching for something - anything, really - to reveal the trick. For trick there had to be; there was no way Shepard was going to accept that solid rock had just flexed - stiffly, granted - and stretched the way flesh would have.

Her fingers and eyes told her the same thing as her omni-tool. Though there were small fissures here and there in the stone, the golem was a single, solid piece of igneous rock, shot throughout with small veins of what Shepard now knew to be lyrium.

"Fuck," she whispered, in something strangely akin to awe.

"What?" Hawke asked. She was holding a hand up in front of the golem's roughly carved face, waving it slowly back and forth. The golem's head turned slightly in order to follow the movement.

"This is unbelievable," Shepard stated flatly. "How the fuck does it move?"

Hawke shrugged. "Magic, presumably. Who knows?"

"Legend… or history, if you listen to the dwarves back in Orzammar… says that the Paragon Carridan discovered the secret to making the golems," Varric told them. "For…shit, I don't know… a thousand years or some nonsense, the dwarves claim that an army of golems kept them safe from the darkspawn."

"And?" asked Hawke, now bouncing up and down on her toes while the golem continued to follow her movements.

"And what?"

"What happened?"

Varric shrugged. "I don't know. Paragon Carridan disappeared, and his thaig was lost, presumably along with the secret of how to make golems. The ones that already existed are scattered, along with the rods used to control them," he gestured at the stone in Hawke's grasp.

Hawke grinned cheerfully. "Mother will be so delighted when I bring this home," she chuckled. "But I'm afraid I'll have to keep the control rod locked tightly away from Sandal. Otherwise, I can just imagine the complaints from the neighbors."

Anders laughed. "What, you don't think the nobles in Hightown would find it entertaining to watch a dwarf on the shoulders of a golem, stomping through the gardens and crying, 'Enchantment!'?"

"The nobles in Hightown," Hawke said, with a disdainful curl of her lip, "do not believe in common entertainment. For them, it's the capitalized version, Entertainment, or nothing."

"The difference being?" Anders shifted his weight and folded his arms, an amused smile on his face.

"Money, of course," Varric answered.

"And a decided lack of fun," Hawke added. She turned away from the golem and let her eyes travel down the line of waiting statues, none of which had so much as twitched when their brother - or sister - had come to life. Beyond the golems, the sort of raised promenade on which they were standing ended, a ruined set of steps leading down to what appeared to be a large, open hall of some sort in the distance. Just to their left, at the edge of the promenade, a jagged chasm gaped.

"I don't see any sign of the sword here," Hawke said thoughtfully. "Although these certainly seem to be the golems Emrys mentioned."

Varric snorted again. "If that little bastard Iwan had only made it a little further," he said, with a shake of his head.

"I, for one, am glad he didn't," Anders claimed. "Facing darkspawn and deepstalkers and giant spiders is bad enough. I'm not particularly keen to face golems as well."

Hawke lifted her shoulders. "Shall we see if the sword is just ahead? There seems to be a sizeable room up there."

Varric made a florid bow. "After you, my lady Hawke."

He eyed the golem. "And your delightful new garden accessory."

Hawke uttered a silvery peal of laughter, the stress and crankiness of the past five days underground dissolving, and started along the promenade in a jaunty swagger. The golem followed, in a thundering march that was the antithesis of either jaunty or swaggering.

They had not yet come abreast of the next golem in line when the creature suddenly stirred, limbs coming to life with the same grinding as the first.

Hawke glanced over her shoulder at the three of them. "Looks like I'll have a matched set," she caroled.

The new golem was moving toward her, gaining momentum.

"Hawke," said Shepard, suddenly filled with foreboding, "I have a bad feeling about this." She'd fought enough synthetics to recognize aggressive intent, even in creatures that theoretically shouldn't have either the emotion of aggression or the implied consciousness of intent.

Hawke waved the control rod at the advancing golem, who was now nearly upon her, fists raised over its head.

"It's not working," she exclaimed, her surprise heavily modified by trepidation. "Why isn't it working?!"

The golem behind her stepped forward, catching the heavy blow as it came down. Hawke danced nimbly out of the way, still waving the rod like it was some kind of fairy godmother's wand. Then she swore and thrust the thing into her belt, hands snapping to the hilts of her daggers.

Varric dropped back, reaching over his shoulder for Bianca. Shepard did likewise, her mind assessing, analyzing…

Fire's probably out. Hawke will dull her blades before she can do more than knock chips out of it. Varric's bolts are probably also out…

She brought Garrus to her shoulder and sighted.

If the things are magic, Anders can probably hurt them. Let's see what a slug can do…

She fired, absorbing the rifle's recoil and resettling the stock on her shoulder while her mind continued to process, her eye automatically seeking evidence that her shot had damaged the thing in any way.

There was a small divot in the creature's forehead.

Kal'Reegar's words came to her, from a lifetime ago on Haestrom. Kill it with bug bites…

She grunted. That's about it…

She sighted and fired again, striving for near-perfect accuracy. Each shot the same, every slug contacting the same few square centimeters.

Again. And again. And again.

Finally, the thing dropped to its knees, and then toppled to its side.

There were only a few times Shepard's fingers had itched this bad to caress the trigger of a missle launcher. There's a weapon for every circumstance, Shepard. The trick is just figuring it out ahead of time.

The five of them regrouped, four of them staring down the line of remaining golems with resignation, and one with an expression of stony indifference that was, as it were, built in.

"What do you think the odds are that the rest of them are going to be friendly?" Varric asked quietly.

"Not good," Hawke admitted. "Probably very bad, in fact."

Shepard shook her head. "Never tell me the odds," she said flatly.

"Ah," Varric nodded sagely. "You prefer blind optimism. I can respect that."

"No," Shepard disagreed. "They just piss me off."

The golem said nothing.

"Why do I continue to follow you, Hawke?" Anders sighed, squinting at the potentially hostile golems and then back at the rogue.

"Her ass?" Varric quipped.

"It's a nice ass," Shepard agreed.

"Oh?" said Hawke archly. "Maybe when this is all over, you and I can go someplace quiet and you can tell what other parts of my body you admire."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "You've been spending a little too much time with the pirate, Hawke." She, too, squinted down the line of currently immobile statues.

"How do you want to work this?" she asked. "They seem to have some kind of proximity sensor. Do you think it's possible we can sneak by?"

Hawke glanced once at the chasm beyond the promenade. "Maybe. Maybe not. But keeping that close to the edge definitely puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to maneuvering."

Shepard nodded. "True. And I don't think we'd want to risk trying to sprint by, either. One of these things is hard enough to take down on it's own. I wouldn't like to have to fight three of them at once."

"You're telling me," said Hawke ruefully, looking down at her dulled blades.

"Magic seems to hurt them," Shepard acknowledged with a nod to Anders. "And a rifle will put one down eventually. But it's slow work."

"I wish I had more affinity with lightning," Anders frowned.

"From what Isabela has said, your skill with lightning is… impressive," countered Varric.

Anders flushed. "That… ah… particular spell is not difficult," he admitted sheepishly. "There is a great deal of difference between that and disrupting an attacking golem."

Shepard's eyes snapped to the mage. "Electricity disrupts them?"

Anders snorted. "It disrupts everything."

"That gives me an idea." Shepard's deep emerald eyes narrowed. "Be ready. If this goes wrong…"

Varric caressed his crossbow's stock lovingly. "We're behind you, Starkiller."

This was sufficient to derail all thought in Shepard's mind. "Starkiller?"

The dwarf raised an eyebrow. "You did say you destroyed a star system."

"Not on my own! Or, well… not intention…" she halted. "Look, it was necessary, and I didn't destroy the system's star. I just… crashed an asteroid into a relay. It was the resulting explosion that… caused the damage."

"I don't know," said Hawke, grinning. "I kind of like it."

"It's appropriate," Varric argued. "And it rather adequately describes why you still scare the piss out of me."

Shepard scowled. "Oh, just shut up. Hold position for my command."

With a flicker, she disappeared into nothingness.

Anders shuddered. "I hate it when she does that," he complained.

The next golem in line suddenly began to move, its head turning as if searching for something. It seemed to spy the tightly packed squad, and began the rolling lumber the companions knew would gather speed as it crossed the distance to them.

There was a sizzle as the air superheated around a fat, arcing blue-white spark that suddenly speared the golem, freezing it in place and causing it to jerk spasmodically.

"Now!" came Shepard's voice from behind the golem. "Ranged attacks only!"

Hawke rummaged in a belt pouch as both Varric and the mage let fly with their attacks. A moment later, Hawke bounced a small globe in the palm of her hand, curled her fingers around it tightly, and whipped it in a sidearm motion at the golem. When the globe shattered against its chest, an acrid stink and wisps of vapor appeared as the acid inside began a caustic burn into the stone.

"I said ranged attacks only!" Shepard bellowed, as Hawke's golem suddenly began a charge.

Hawke grabbed for the control rod, waving it desperately. "I didn't tell it to!" she yelled back. "Maker's cock, I have no idea how this thing works!"

Just before the suddenly rogue friendly unit arrived, the hostile one dropped to its knees before Shepard. And promptly exploded.

Both Shepard and Hawke's golem were knocked back by the blast and resultant debris. In the golem's case, it simply toppled over backward. In Shepard's, she was flung a good fifteen meters, impacting the next golem in line and knocking the breath from her lungs, though her shields absorbed most of the damage.

Most.

Ugh. I'll be feeling that tomorrow.

The new golem ground to life, drawing one mountain-sized fist back and unloading a roundhouse on Shepard before she could dodge, and the Spectre was once again tossed through the air like a child's toy, tumbling and skidding when she hit the promenade.

That one… that one I'll be feeling now.

Shepard gasped for air, recognizing the unmistakable feel of broken ribs, and slowly rolled to her hands and knees, blinking and shaking her head to clear her vision.

The friendly golem was clambering laboriously to its feet. The stink of acid said that Hawke had thrown another of her little surprises, and Anders' staff was whistling with through the air, alive with energy.

Shepard tried to push herself back on her feet, but tipped precariously, her vision still swimming.

Make that broken ribs and a concussion. Much as you hate them, helmets have a purpose.

She gave up, and sat back abruptly on her butt, reaching over her shoulder for Garrus. Fine. I'm a sniper, I can shoot from any position…

If I could see, I could shoot from any position.

Shepard shut her eyes tightly, then opened them and stared through a scope that seemed full of haze. Setting aside precision for the moment, she simply took aim at center mass, and squeezed the trigger.

Breathe. Center. Push away pain. Push away thought.

Shepard felt the familiar stillness surround her. She fired as quickly as the powerful rifle's heat sink would allow, only dimly aware of anything other than the target. Her focus narrowed, sharpened, compensating for the double-vision, permitting her an accuracy that was… merely good, instead of fucking brilliant, but she'd take it.

The friendly golem had barely regained its balance when the hostile one aimed another Richter scale punch at it. Hawke's golem flung up an arm to block the punch, and countered with a blow of its own that staggered the hostile.

To Shepard, it looked like an underwater boxing bout. She continued to fire, taking a slightly longer pause between shots to ensure that the stone chest she was aiming at was the correct one.

She let out a noise that was half groan, half cheer as the penultimate stone warrior fell face first into the stone pavers of the promenade.

A moment later, Anders' hands were on her, checking the extent of the damage. Shepard swatted them away when the healer pressed gently on her side.

"Yes, yes," she said shortly. "They're broken. Probably a mild concussion as well."

"Shepard," the mage ordered sternly, "I need to know how badly. I can't do that unless you let me."

Mutely, Shepard held out her left arm, the information from her hardsuit miniframe on a display scroll across the omni-tool's interface.

Anders sighed, and focused his attention on it. After a moment, he nodded to himself and took Shepard's temples in his hands.

"This might be a little…"

"Argh!" Shepard shouted, as a brief sliver of icy pain shot through her head.

"…painful." The healer released her temples and moved his hands apart slightly, the azure glow of the healing magic flaring out to envelop the Spectre's body.

After a moment, he sagged, the energy winking out abruptly.

"Please tell me that did it," he panted.

Shepard scanned the new data as it scrolled by. "Close enough," she said, "but what about you?"

"I'm fine. Just… drained."

Hawke and Varric looked from the spent mage to the last golem and back again.

"Anders, stay out of this one," Hawke said, striding up to her golem and patting it on the back gingerly.

She pointed to the last immobile statue. "Go get him, boy," she told it.

"And you think that's going to…" Varric began, only to stop as the slightly battered golem broke into a lumbering run.

If the previous fight between golems had approximated an underwater boxing match, this one looked more like an equivalent sumo match, as the friendly golem caught the hostile one around the middle before it had even fully awoken and flung it to the ground.

"I feel like I should have money riding on this," Varric commented as he watched the golems grapple in rapt fascination.

Shepard forced herself to her feet. The double vision was gone, and her ribs no longer creaked with every movement, but she still felt like she'd just been run over by a Mako.

Hawke had begun cheering for her golem like a soccer mom at her kid's game.

"Why didn't we just do this from the beginning?" Shepard asked sharply.

"Stupidity, mostly," Varric answered.

"No, no!" Hawke cried, as her golem took a particularly nasty combo.

"Get up, get up!" she cried, as it fell to one knee.

"Oh, fuck it," said Shepard, stalking forward and overloading her omni-tool. The resultant arc of electricity wrapped around both golems.

"Shepard!" Hawke protested.

"Your golem was getting his ass kicked," Shepard replied.

"So? Now he's getting his ass fried!"

"If you have a better suggestion, I'm willing to hear it."

Varric set Bianca's stock to his shoulder and looked up at Shepard. "You wouldn't happen to have any of the qunari's gaatlok, would you?"

"No."

"Pity."

The charge fizzled out. Both golems swayed slightly, wisps of smoke rising from the stone. Both golems drew back a fist, and both golems punched. The sound as they both connected was like a thunderclap. Cracks appeared in Hawke's golem, widening quickly, until it just… came apart, chunks of stone rolling away in all directions.

The remaining golem turned its eyes on the rest of them and took a step forward.

Varric's explosive bolt hit it in the chest and detonated.

For a moment, there was a hail of small pebbles. Then there was a rain of large stones.

When the three humans and one dwarf cautiously lifted their heads, there was a smoking crater where the golem had been.

Hawke made an attempt to dust herself off.

Anders brushed some gravel out of his hair.

Shepard thumped the side of her head with the heel of her hand.

Varric looked around at the others. "Don't everyone thank me at once."

"No fear of that," muttered Anders under his breath.

"Well," said Hawke, brightly. "That was… unexpected. I must say, I'm rapidly losing interest in this sword."

"I never had any to begin with," Anders replied.

Varric shrugged. "Let's at least check this big vaulted hall. If there's no sign of the sword there, I vote we forget it and head back to the surface."

Shepard nodded agreement. "We did what we came here to do."

They carefully picked their way over the recent rubble to the broken stairway at the end of the promenade. Hawke motioned for the others to wait as she cautiously eased herself onto the stairway, testing to see if it was still sound.

"It's dwarven construction, Hawke. It'll be fine." Varric rubbed the side of his face wearily.

"All those collapsed passageways were dwarven construction, too," Anders reminded him. "Let Hawke do her thing."

"One at a time," Hawke called from the foot of the stairs. "They're definitely crumbling, and that chasm runs right underneath."

They followed Hawke's suggestion, negotiating the five or six wide steps one by one, until all four of them were safe. Hawke took point, as usual, and Shepard brought up the rear, covering the squad's six.

"Is that a door?" asked Varric, motioning ahead to the squad's right.

"Yes, I think it…" Hawke began, but Anders cut her off sharply.

"Darkspawn!"

Where the hell do they come from? Shepard grunted, and lobbed an incendiary burst at the monsters rushing the from the direction of the promenade, following after it with her omni-blade ready.

After the difficulties posed by the stone golems, it seemed almost a relief to once again be facing an organic opponent. Hawke seemed to feel the same way; Shepard heard the rogue make a small sound of satisfaction when her blades found flesh rather than being deflected by stone.

The pack of darkspawn was small, and weighted heavily with archers. Scout patrol, Shepard surmised, as they made short work of the monsters. None of them would be reporting back to a larger unit.

Hawke wiped her blades on one of the corpses, and, as usual, began searching the bodies. Shepard understood the logic, but part of her wondered at how habitual it seemed for Hawke to loot… well, everything she came across. The rogue seemed completely undeterred even by bloated, decomposing carcasses.

And how is that any different from you, Shepard? You'd search a week-old body if you had to.

Ah. There was the difference. Shepard would search a rotting corpse if necessary. Hawke would do so because it was there.

The scout patrol was apparently carrying very little of interest to Hawke. She pocketed a few coins, and tossed a strangely shaped pin to Varric.

"Anything?"

Varric examined it quickly. "Just an old dwarven house pin. Worth maybe a few coppers at most." He tossed it back.

Hawke shrugged and tucked it in her pouch with the coins. Anders caught Shepard's eye and smiled ruefully, with a tiny shake of his head.

Hawke.

The rogue led them deeper into the hall, making for the doorway Varric had pointed out. Although at one time the impressively vaulted and pillared hall would have been breathtaking, the cracked stones of the floor were stained with blood and worse, and littered with piles of unnameable filth.

"If there is a bright center to creation," said Anders with distaste, "we're in the place it's farthest from."

The door in question was amazingly thick and heavy, built of solid stone to withstand punishment, but nonetheless was hanging open. The room inside appeared to have been a treasury at one point. Now, however…

"Bloody darkspawn shit on everything they touch. There's nothing here," Anders said sourly.

Several chests lay broken open, their contents smashed and scattered. If there had been a sword, it had either already been taken by the darkspawn, or had been destroyed like the rest of the chests' contents.

Hawke knelt and began rummaging anyway, coming up with a single pair of intact leather boots. She swung her light pack from her back and stuffed the boots inside. "It's something, anyway," she muttered. "Let's get out of here."

"We have company," Anders informed them.

Hawke slipped to the doorway of the treasury room and peeked out. "Andraste's flaming ass. There's a whole blasted pack of them out there!"

Shepard drifted up beside her, unshipping Garrus.

"There are two emissaries," Hawke added, as if the darkspawn had arranged that as a personal affront to the rogue.

There was an echoing boom. "One emissary, now," corrected Shepard, resettling the rifle against her shoulder.

Hawke gave the Spectre a tight grin and quickly fished a vial out of her pouch. "Can you give me a fireball in just a moment?"

Shepard grinned back. "Say the word," she replied, dropping the second emissary as the darkspawn boiled toward them.

The rogue gently tossed the vial through the doorway. It smashed on the floor about eight meters away, causing a faintly iridescent sheen to bloom over the stone.

"Now."

The burning ball of plasma hit the darkspawn just as they reached the slick, the oil igniting with a loud whoomph and the sound of screams.

"Nice," Shepard commented, picking off another darkspawn as it attempted to detour around the flaming oil. Hawke burst out of the cover of the doorway, hands already wrapping around her daggers' hilts.

Varric moved up into the position she'd just vacated, Bianca at the ready.

Between the fire and the two ranged attackers, Hawke found herself just mopping up the injured and dying, until a second wave of darkspawn erupted from somewhere near the golem's promenade. As she turned her attention to the newcomers, slashing and ripping with her daggers, she failed to see a third wave break from the far side of a steep stairway behind her.

"Shit!" cried Anders. "Ogre!"

Shepard swung her rifle around and trained it on the huge monster. The ogre was at least half again as big as a brute, impressively horned, fanged, and clawed. And also, very, very tough - despite scoring a headshot on it, the beast just shook its head and roared, charging for Hawke's unprotected back.

"Hawke," Anders shouted, sending a burst of ice at the monstrous creature, "ogre behind you!"

Shepard swore and swung herself out of cover, wishing as always that she didn't have to rely on just the Mantis. As she ran, she fired an incendiary burst at the group of darkspawn clustered around the ogre's legs.

When Hawke found herself sandwiched between a group of hurlocks and a charging ogre, she snatched another narrow glass tube from her belt pouch, throwing it to the ground at her feet. A thick cloud of smoke rose from the smashed container, obscuring the rogue and allowing her to disengage from the hurlocks and ease around their flank. As the hurlocks swung blindly through the smoke, Hawke slit one's throat and stabbed two others, with a fourth felled by friendly stab.

The ogre roared again. It had pulled up sharply when Hawke had disappeared into her smoke cloud, but now it crouched and lowered its head, preparing to charge once again. Whether it was dumb luck or perhaps its great height, it appeared that the ogre was not fooled by the smoke screen, and its charge caught the rogue, knocking her over even as she attempted to leap aside.

A massive hand snapped out and wrapped around Hawke's waist as she scrambled to get to her feet, and the ogre lifted the rogue into the air, shaking her viciously. As it prepared to crush the life from her, it suddenly stopped and screamed, dropping Hawke and stumbling two steps backward.

A thick line of dark ichor-like blood spurted from the ogre's lower abdomen where Shepard had run up one of its legs and slashed open its belly. As she leapt down, it swiped one gigantic, clawed hand at her while the other clutched at the terrible wound, trying desperately to keep its insides where they belonged.

Three of the talons snagged in her armor, and the fourth tore across Shepard's neck and face. The Spectre was flung across the room, achieving a state of uncontrolled flight for the third time in little more than an hour. Her body impacted the wall, rebounded, and dropped to the floor like a brick.

Anders sent another wave of healing energy at Hawke, and was rewarded by seeing the rogue crawl to her feet, groping for the daggers that had fallen from her hands.

Varric was running for the fray, although his finger never wavered from Bianca's trigger. He sent bolt after bolt into the darkspawn, dropping a few and slowing the others down.

"Hawke," he called, his voice roughened by worry and fear, "throw another oil flask!"

Hawke seemed dazed, her hands moving slowly, clumsily, as she fumbled at her belt.

"Hawke!"

Her fingers closed over the vial she wanted, and the rogue tossed it toward the largest concentration of remaining darkspawn.

Varric paused only long enough to slot an explosive bolt home, and fired, ducking his head against the blast.

As the bolt exploded, scattering darkspawn and darkspawn bits in all directions, the ogre fell to its knees. A faint blue-white coil of intestine could be seen pushing its way through the creature's gut wound.

Hawke staggered as she broke into a run, charging for the last remaining few enemies that weren't frozen, on fire, or crawling slowly across the ground.

Varric trailed after her, shooting upright targets and stabbing the crawling wounded with the razor-sharp bayonet affixed to Bianca's delightful underside.

"Shepard's not moving," Anders yelled, darting across the corpse-strewn battlefield as the two rogues dealt with the final darkspawn.

"Is she…?" Hawke called to him as her daggers ripped through the final darkspawn.

"Alive, but badly injured. Very badly," the healer replied.

As Hawke and Varric approached, they could see what the mage meant. Shepard's neck and face had been slashed open by the ogre's claws, and she was bleeding heavily. Anders held his palm tightly against the Spectre's neck, but blood was still seeping through his fingers.

"I don't dare close it - not with all this darkspawn blood," he said desperately. "Hawke, get that potion I used on you earlier out of my pack."

The rogue did as he asked quickly, uncorking the bottle before starting to hand it to the mage. He shook his head. "No. I need you to pour it over the wounds. Start slowly. I will move my hand aside briefly - douse the wound thoroughly as quickly as you can. I'll need to start closing the wound very soon or she will bleed to death."

Hawke nodded and gently tipped the bottle until a steady trickle poured from the mouth.

Anders lifted aside his hand, and both Hawke and the wound responded - Hawke, by tipping the bottle further, and the wound by oozing blood in time with Shepard's heartbeat.

The Spectre didn't stir, even as the burning liquid splashed over her neck and face.

"That's good," said Anders, dropping his hands back to the wound. Sweat broke out on the healer's brow, his face screwed up in agonized concentration. His breathing became ragged and harsh, and his hands and finally arms and shoulders began trembling with exertion.

He passed out.

---

When Anders regained consciousness, he was lying on his side on his bedroll. In front of him, a small fire crackled.

"Careful," warned Hawke. Her hands grasped his shoulders gently, helping him into a sitting position.

The mage groaned and clutched his head. "Shepard?" he whispered.

"Still alive, Blondie," said Varric. "You did good."

Shepard was lying a few feet away on her own bedroll. Her breathing was slow, but steady. She appeared to still be unconscious.

"Has she woken up at all?" he managed, accepting a waterskin from Hawke.

Hawke shook her head. "Not yet."

Anders drank sparingly. They still had several days' journey back to the surface.

"How long was I out?" He sipped again.

Varric shrugged. "A couple of hours."

Anders glanced around. Apparently, the rogues had set camp right there against the wall. It was a fairly defensible position, being bounded on one side by the chasm and another by the wall itself.

"We'll rest here a while - until Shepard wakes up," Hawke went on. "Varric's been studying your map and thinks he may have found a shortcut back to the surface."

"Praise the Maker," murmured the healer, forcing himself to crawl the few feet to Shepard's side. "That would be the best news I've heard since we set foot down here."

The wound on Shepard's neck had closed to a thick, angry red line. Her cracked armor was absolutely covered in drying, sticky blood, save where the Warden's potion had washed it away. The wounds on her face were still open, though, and glowed with a faint reddish light.

"What in Andraste's name is that?" he muttered, running his fingers along the deep cuts.

"Ah-ah," scolded Hawke, grabbing his wrist lightly. "You need to rest. Shepard's breathing and heartbeat are strong for now."

She pulled him back to his bedroll. Varric pushed some hard cheese and jerky into his hands.

"Eat, Blondie." The dwarf made a face. "If you can," he added, glancing around at the remains on the battlefield.

"It won't be the first time I've had to choke down a meal with the smell of darkspawn flesh in my nose," Anders sighed.

"It's the ogre," explained Hawke apologetically.

Varric shook his head ruefully. "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside."

Anders began to eat methodically. He hadn't been lying when he said it wasn't the first time he'd had to do so surrounded by darkspawn corpses. He'd found that the Wardens' infamous appetite helped in those situations. The body demanded food - all the mind had to do was blank out the sensory information from the nose.

When he finished wolfing down the rations, he sipped from the waterskin again and Varric opened the map to show him the new route the dwarf had discovered. Anders agreed that it looked like a viable option.

The healer laid back on his bedroll again and closed his eyes. His head was still pounding - one of the telltale symptoms of magical overexertion. As was the utter exhaustion he felt in every muscle. If he didn't know better, he'd swear he'd been laboring in the mines for days.

The rogues let him rest for another hour or so before waking him. Shepard still wasn't fully awake, but she'd shifted position, rolling over onto her side and curling up loosely. Anders checked her heartbeat and breathing again, and was pleased that they remained strong. The wound on her neck looked better, too, the redness fading to an irritated pink. Her cheek and jaw were still open and glowing, but there didn't seem to be any oozing from the slashes, so Anders shrugged it off. He'd ask her about it later.

"I'm going to try to wake her," Anders told the others. "Normally, I would let her awaken on her own - it's the best course - but I'm not comfortable with us staying around all these corpses." His face grew grim. "A feast like this won't go unnoticed for long."

Hawke nodded, and she and Varric began breaking camp.

Anders laid a hand on Shepard's shoulder and gave her a gentle little shake. "Shepard," he called softly.

He repeated the actions a second time when she gave no response. This time she stirred, groaning.

Her eyelids flickered and finally opened. For a moment, Anders thought that her eyes glowed red, deep within the green, but the redness faded as she moved her head and he chalked it up to a reflection of the firelight.

"How do you feel?" he asked quietly. "I realize the question might be a stupid one."

"You're right," she croaked, struggling into a sitting position with the healer's help. "What the hell happened?"

"The ogre got you," Anders said simply. "You hit the wall pretty hard, and hit the ground even harder."

He looked down at his hands. "I did my best to heal you, but…"

"Yeah," Shepard replied, understanding both the unspoken words and the guilt that went with them. "It's okay."

He handed her the waterskin and helped hold it while she drank.

"You should try to eat a little food," Anders suggested, but Shepard shook her head.

"Varric's found us a shortcut," Hawke put in, as she shooed Shepard off her blankets and began to roll them tightly. "With a little luck, we should be back on the surface in two days. A bit shorter if we push."

Shepard's expression said very clearly what she thought about pushing. At least for the moment.

"You think you can stand?" Anders asked, getting to his feet and holding out his hands.

Shepard grasped his hands in her own and let the healer help haul her to her feet. She put out an arm to steady herself on the wall for a moment, then squared her shoulders. The crack in her chestplate widened as she moved, and she looked down at it, frowning.

"Hell," she said shortly. "Anders, help me out of this thing."

"Are you sure?" asked Hawke, with concern. "We may still meet more darkspawn."

Shepard shook her head. "It won't offer me much protection like this," she said. "It's not worth the discomfort or the possible injury if it should shatter."

Anders helped her unfasten the clamps and seals, and they removed the armor from her shoulders, back, and chest. By the time they'd finished, Hawke and Varric were ready to go.

"Ready?" Hawke asked the group.

"More than ready," sighed Shepard. "I've had enough of the Dark Roads to last me a lifetime."

"Seconded," agreed Anders emphatically.

"Thirded," Varric stated firmly.

Hawke rolled her eyes.

"You know,"she said with a mock pout, "I find your lack of faith disturbing."

---

A/N: *(and more) Homage. Because.