I'm going to apologize ahead of time for this chapter. It's later than I wanted it to be (I've had the bulk of it written for about 5 days now) because I've had a very, very bad fibromyalgia flare-up and spent the better part of three days just sleeping or with the horrible brain fog. So please forgive me on that.
Secondly, I use a LOT of the Legacy dialogue here, partly due to said brain fog making it difficult for me to parse together my own dialogue and partly because it just happens to be what needed to be said. I'm not planning on using as much game dialogue in the next chapter. Also, the next chapter should see them on their way out of the Grey Warden prison and on their way back to Kirkwall, so Hawke and Fenris can get back to their daughter and the kid fic can ensue again.
"Well. Shit," Varric said, and Hawke felt that was the best summing-up of the situation that anyone could have done.
She turned from the barrier that had fallen, her head down, and sighed. Not in defeat, just in… exhaustion, really. The rest of her crew stood at the foot of the steps, watching her, and she sighed again and shook off the dark feeling that had settled on her shoulders.
"Right. I guess we're going forward, then. Unless you've got an idea of how to break down the barrier?" she said, directing the last comment to the other two mages.
Merrill and Anders shared a look, and then both concentrated, intensely, on the purple, glowing barrier behind Hawke. She skipped down the rest of the steps, to make sure she was good and out of the way.
"Sorry, Hawke," Merrill told her. "I don't even think blood magic can open that. Or at least, none that I know of."
"It feels odd," Anders said, brows drawn down. "Familiar, in a way, but… I don't think I can get past it, either. It's not like any barrier I've run across, but it feels familiar. Why does it feel familiar?"
Hawke shrugged uncomfortably for a moment and then straightened her back. It would do no one any good to despair. "Well, let's head forward, then. Varric? 'Bela? One of you want to take the lead?"
Isabela led this time, keeping a wary eye out for traps, and Fenris dropped back behind to walk beside Hawke. He touched her arm lightly, just enough to know that she wasn't alone, and Hawke shot him a grateful smile. They were a team, she and Fenris, even if nothing was completely formalized between them. He still wore that red ribbon, after all.
"How is it you get into these situations so often?" he asked her, his voice carrying on a normal level.
"What do you mean?" she said, looking at one of the banners as they passed. Those were Grey Warden banners. She recognized the griffon.
"Attacked by dwarves, approached by strangers, stumbling into strange puzzles. Madness," Fenris said, and Hawke started slightly.
"It's a gift," she replied, smirking slightly. He chuckled softly.
"Well, I think you should return it." Carver barked a laugh, out in front of them, and Merrill tittered slightly.
On her other side, Anders was looking around with a frown, his body tense. "Hawke," he said, after a few silent moments. "I… I think I'm beginning to sense some darkspawn."
"Darkspawn nearby? Are we close to the Deep Roads, then?"
"I don't know," he answered, his face open and honest. "But my Warden senses are tingling."
"We'll be ready for them if they show up," she promised him. "Everyone, if you see any signs of darkspawn, stay back. Don't get the blood in your mouth, and if you take any wounds, fall back away from them immediately."
"I'll do my best to keep the barriers up on Fenris and Carver," Anders told her, "but I'll need your help in that as well."
"You've got it. We'll make that our priority." They rounded a corner and came out onto some sort of balcony, with a waist-high railing; from there, Hawke could see several darkspawn running in a group, and she shared a troubled look with Anders. "Looks like your Warden senses were right," she told him, voice full of disappointment.
"Of all the things to be right about," Anders said, trying to affect a cheerful tone but failing. Hawke patted him on a feathered pauldron.
"Be on the alert, everyone."
After that, there was relatively little discussion. Everyone was on too high of an alert to even engage in the usual banter; darkspawn were no joking matter, and being trapped wherever they were with darkspawn made things worse, not better. It didn't help that it seemed all they were doing was going from one identical corridor to the next; all the plain, grey stone was beginning to get boring.
Hawke was following right along behind Isabela, who was on point, when they ran into a large room that held what resembled nothing so much as prison cells at the same time a group of genlocks did.
Immediately, Isabela dropped into stealth and disappeared, leaving Hawke out front. She hurriedly erected a barrier around the entire group, since they were still so cloistered together, and then fire began raining down on the darkspawn's heads.
Bolts from Bianca followed, and Carver and Fenris both rushing forward, swords at the ready. These darkspawn were larger and, by far, uglier, than the ones she had run into previously, and Hawke watched with great distaste as the short-ranged fighters slashed and hacked while the other two mages flung one offensive spell after another at the things.
There could not have been more than ten of the things, and the fight was over relatively quickly with little more than bruises sustained. Hawke took the opportunity of a quick break to examine the room more closely; one of the cells seemed to be a sort of prison of its own, as there looked to be a demon or a shade held behind a barrier there. On the walls were large shields with the Grey Warden symbol on them, and Hawke carefully approached the one that was closest.
She heard a booming and, somehow, familiar, voice, then, intoned: "Be bound here for eternity. Hunter, stilled. Rage, smothered. Desire, dampened. Pride, crushed. In the name of the Maker, so let it be." It was so familiar… Hawke curiously fidgeted with first one, then the other, of the two shields, to see if she could get the voice to speak again. There was an odd shifting in the room, and then the barrier was down in the cell and the shade, for shade it was, was free.
It called more of its fellows to it, and at least in this, they were able to get in closer and be slightly more reckless in hopes of scoring heavier hits, to get the fight over with more quickly. It was a harder fight than the one against the genlocks had been, but Hawke and her merry band of misfits had gotten long used to fighting shades, and these went down with no more trouble than any of the others she had faced.
As suddenly as the battle was finished, the voice began again. "I could do nothing about the Wardens' use of demons in this horrid place. But, I will have no one say that any magic of mine released one into the world!" She didn't realize she had been staring, straining to hear every last nuance of the voice, until Carver spoke up, excited.
"That sounded like Father's voice!" She inhaled sharply; that was why the voice sounded familiar.
"I'm liking this less and less," she muttered, rubbing the back of her neck and closing her eyes. "Blood magic and demons… This isn't the Father we knew."
"To be fair, I think he said something about not releasing demons," Carver pointed out.
"Even so, I don't like it."
"I never said I did, sister, but we've got to live with how things are, and now how we want them to be." She looked at Carver with widened eyes and blinked several times.
"Listen to your brother," Fenris said, walking past her and into one of the cells to look around in it. Hawke shook her head; the day Fenris told her she should listen to Carver should have been the day nugs flew. But who knew what was going on, back in Kirkwall? The place was insane enough that nugs could actually be flying.
Hallway after hallway, dilapidated stone room after dilapidated stone room, they fought their way forward. None of them could figure out what this building had been built for, other than the general idea of a prison, but it had Grey Warden banners all over. Anders was happy to confirm that was what they were, although not so happy that they were actually there, in and amongst the darkspawn who continued attacking.
The crew was just getting ready to cross one of the longer bridges when an actual, for lack of a better term, person appeared before them. He was balding badly, with faint wisps of hair sticking up everywhere, and those matching the grey of his beard. His eyes were that same odd murky shade that the dwarves' eyes had been, and he walked in a hunch. However, he was dressed in what appeared to have been some rather fine armor, with a sword strapped to his back that rivaled anything Fenris or Carver used, so he must have been stronger than he looked.
"The key!" the man rasped, hobbling towards them, and Hawke took a step back, pulling Varric, who was taking point, with her. "The dwarves. I heard them. Looking." Something about his pauses between words made her think of Xenon. "How do you bring the key here?"
Hawke held up the staff that she had recovered from Insane Dwarf 523. "You mean this? How is this a key?"
"Magic," the man responded, looking around. Hawke wondered if he could actually see through those eyes. "Old magic, it is. Magic… from the blood." Great. More blood magic. It seemed she was not going to like this answer. "It made the seals. It… can destroy them." Seals?
"I came in here to find this Corypheus person," she said. "Do you know where, or what, he is?"
"Do not say his name!" the stranger hissed, taking a step back and gesturing wildly with his hands. "He will hear you! Do not wake him!" He gestured to the staff, then. "Not when you hold the key!"
"The door sealed behind us," Hawke said, wondering if that was the same seal this man had alluded to earlier. "Is there another exit?"
"No way out when the walls stand," the man explained, and then shuffled to the side of the bridge and leaned against the metal railing. "The wardens build their prisons well. If the center holds, who cares what else is trapped?"
"I don't think we're getting any help here, Hawke," Varric told her, with a shake of his head. At the mention of her name, the man turned back to her.
"Hawke? You… are the blood of the Hawke?" He paused for a moment and then turned his back on the entire group, hobbling a few steps away from them. "Yes. Yes, I smell the magic on you. But you hold the key! The key… to his death."
"Who are you?" Hawke asked, moving forward slightly. "What's wrong with you?"
"You ask me that? I am the one who belongs here, not you! You are no darkspawn!"
"He's wearing Grey Warden armor," Anders said, stepping up beside Hawke. "Maybe he used to be one?"
"You hear it, no? Hear it calling? I smell it in you!" the man said, to Anders. "Yes, yes… Wardens. Grey Wardens. Guardians against the Blight!" At that, he seemed to stand a little straighter, and his voice took on an edge of pride. "I know the way out. Follow me. Down and in, down and in…"
"Because I always like to follow the advice of tainted, crazy people," Hawke said, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead and closing her eyes.
"Never stopped you before," Fenris said.
"You always follow the advice of tainted, crazy people, Hawke," Isabela added, helpfully.
"When have you stopped?" Carver asked. Hawke sighed dramatically and turned to face the rest of them, giving Fenris, especially, a hard glare.
"Is the peanut gallery satisfied now?" There was some general muttering and shuffling of feet that she was going to take for apologies. Fenris merely smirked at her. She would smirk him.
"Not crazy, no," the man said. "I know the prison's secrets. Trust me." He was facing them now, but looked over his shoulder, the way they were headed. "The seals hold us in. Anything comes in, nothing ever leaves. Not without the key. You must use it, yes. On the seals."
"Not on the big seal, back the way we came?" Hawke asked, hefting the staff up again and looking over it.
"Every seal, you touch the key to it. Only then they open. Only… for the Hawke." Hawke turned to face the others as the stranger continued. "Not back. Not up. Only way out is down and through the heart. Down… and through the heart…" She heard him shuffling off again.
"Opinions?" she asked the group in general.
"Do we have a choice?" Varric asked her, rhetorically.
"I'd rather not continue on if this goes into the Deep Roads," Anders said. "The presence of a Warden and the darkspawn scream 'Deep Roads' to me. But I don't think we have much of an option."
"I want to get out of this place as soon as possible," Merrill agreed. "If that means we keep going, then… I guess we keep going."
"But how far are we going to need to follow this guy?" Carver asked. "We have limited rations and no way of knowing where he's really leading us."
"Well, Carver, unless you can suggest a better idea than following him down and out, I'd suggest you stop objecting," Merrill said, surprisingly. She came to stand next to Hawke, folding her arms under her breasts, and frowned sharply at the big man. "I don't know about any of you, but I'm ready to get out of here and see some fresh air again."
"I hate the Deep Roads," Varric and Anders said at the same time, and they gave each other matching looks of understanding.
"Down," the man said, again. "Down, into the depths."
"I guess we're following him, sweet thing, but let me go first," Isabela said, and sauntered past Hawke to follow the stranger. The rest of them fell in line, more or less, behind her.
"I've tried to forget about this side of myself," Anders told her, voice quiet. "With Justice… it just seems so insignificant. But seeing that poor bastard brings it all back. The darkspawn taint. The call of the archdemon. It's inside me, too. As much a part of me as Justice is." She glanced at him and saw the sorrow etched there, and Hawke put a hand on his arm for comfort.
"We're here for you, Anders," she promised him.
"It's good that you've got Fenris instead of me," he said, after a moment. "The ugliness that I would have brought into your life… yours and Bethy's…" Behind her, Fenris growled, and Hawke bit her tongue to keep from telling him that this wasn't the time. Seeing that man and seeing what he would become, plus the presence of the darkspawn all around, was surely weighing heavily on Anders. The least Fenris could do was not make it worse.
"Nobody's perfect," she said to Anders, instead. "But at least we're friends, Anders."
"Yes," was the only reply she got in return.
"You know, I'd like to know who this 'Corypheus' is," she said, to no one in particular. "With a name like that he's bound to go 'mwa ha ha' at some point, I just know it. And really, more blood? Why can't it ever be spit? Or a lock of hair?" Merrill giggled and Anders choked slightly.
"You really want to encounter a spit mage?" Varric asked, sounding disgusted.
"For variety, sure," Hawke replied, flippantly.
"You worry me, you know that, right?" Carver asked her. Up ahead, Isabela cackled with laughter.
"Varric," Hawke began. "I've heard some, ah, stories. Of a… personal… nature. Being spread around."
"You're the Champion of Kirkwall," Varric declared, putting that "boom" into his voice that he usually reserved for the best nights at The Hanged Man. People pay attention to everything you do. And everyone." She caught his smug grin. "And you're wanting me to set the record straight, right? I'm honored."
"Well, it would be nice if there weren't so many salacious details involved in them," Hawke agreed.
"As it happens," Varric said, adjusting Bianca on his shoulder, "I haven't told anyone about you and that, uh, angsty Tevinter elf. Try looking closer to home for that particular intelligence leak."
"Angsty Tevinter elf?" Fenris said the words as if he were tasting them.
"What can I say? I strive for accuracy," Varric told him.
"That… is not accuracy," Fenris replied.
"Everyone's a critic," Varric muttered.
They crossed another one of those long bridges and then came into a large room that was almost circular in shape, with some sort of large, circular platform in the center. There was glowy light coming up from it, and short pillars on it as well, and Hawke felt the key-staff in her hand start to vibrate slightly. This must be one of the seals that the strange man was talking about.
Hawke approached the platform, key-staff at the ready, and as soon as she got into the center of it what looked like an enormous Pride demon manifested. She jumped back with a squawk of surprise, bringing the staff around and in front of her like she usually would with her polearm, but she wasn't used to the different weight distribution, even after fighting the darkspawn with it, and she overbalanced, falling off the platform and straight onto her rear.
The next thing she knew, Carver was physically dragging her out of the way of the demon, shouting at her to find out if she was actually okay. It was more of a surprise than any real sort of injury, and so Hawke shouted back that she was fine, and managed to get first to her knees, then to her feet with little difficulty.
The last time that she and her crew fought a Pride demon, it hadn't turned out quite so well. Fenris had been tempted by the damned thing and turned on her, trying to stick his sword into Hawke in a way that wasn't exactly fun and games. It had hurt tremendously to beat the shit out of him, but at least they knew, between them, who would win in any further battles.
Back on her feet, Hawke directed a cold spell at the thing, and then channeled energy through her staff to direct it at the Pride demon. Or whatever it was, for this thing seemed to be going down a lot easier than the Pride demon they had fought in the Fade. Was it because the thing was corporeal? Or simply because there were more of them there, and they had gotten into an easier grove of fighting?
Whatever the reason, it did not take much more work for the thing to be finished off, and it seemed to sort of… fade away, once they were done with it. Once Hawke stepped back, the strange man came back into the little area and she turned to him.
"Let me guess. The first seal?"
"Two thousand years. The magic holds. Never broken." She sighed and shook her head. Great. Could the man not give a straightforward answer to a simple question? "Give it the key. Let it take the magic back to itself." Hawke shrugged and marched back up onto the platform and held the key out in the middle; suddenly all the pillars lit up and she had to tighten her grip, lest the vibrations overwhelm her and cause her to drop the key-staff. After a moment, it was done, and she rubbed her eyes with her free hand. Maker, but she was even more tired than before.
"The blood works!" the man said, triumphantly. "It is good."
"I appreciate you helping me," Hawke said. "Although all this talking about my blood is a little creepy. Can I ask your name?"
"Name…" the man said, confused. "So long since I've said my name. La… Larius. I was Larius." He turned back to Hawke, his expression sad, and she noted that it wasn't just the hair on his head that was patchy, but his beard as well. "I was Commander of the Grey."
"He was a Warden," Anders said, and the sadness in his voice matched the sadness on this Larius's face. "Poor wretch must have come down here on his Calling."
"Yes!" Larius said, excited. "The Calling! The songs get louder. Only death… can stop them. I am dead. But… I never died."
"Anders? What are you talking about? What's the 'Calling'?"
"Grey Warden secrets," Anders muttered, looking away. "We're not immune to the taint forever. Eventually… Well, we start to become like him, and hear the song of the archdemon. And we turn into ghouls. Most Wardens go to the Deep Roads before that happens, to try to die fighting the darkspawn one last time." And Anders was going to have to suffer through that. Maker's mercy, but Hawke felt pity for him right then, and a slight bit of guilt. If she could only have loved him like she loved Fenris, then Anders's last years could have been spent with a family that he had never known he could have, had never been able to have.
Shaking her head to clear the thoughts, Hawke addressed Larius. "If you're a Warden, do you know what just happened? Do you know why the seal needs my blood?"
"The magic! It calls to the blood, reads the thoughts of those who hold it. The last to hold it… the Hawke. I was there. I was there when he laid the seals. Before I became… this." He looked at Carver, then. "You favor him." It was true; Carver looked so much like Father. Larius turned away from them again, suddenly. "Corypheus calls! In the darkness! What waits there?!" He shuffled off and disappeared, faster than Hawke imagined he could move; by the time she managed to catch up to where he was, Larius was gone from sight.
There was, of course, more darkspawn to fight, but fight they did, all the way to the next staircase. Hawke had Varric lead them down, always on the lookout for more traps, but there seemed to be none around. This was a prison in truth, meant to keep something from getting out rather than to keep them from getting in, and Hawke wondered, if Anders didn't know of this place, exactly what the Grey Wardens had to do with the place. A prison to keep something in, using blood magic on seals for security, that a Warden of Anders's… level? however the Wardens figured those things… didn't know about. She liked this situation less and less.
Almost as soon as they all reached the bottom of the stairwell, Hawke saw shields on the wall similar to those in the first room where they unleashed the shade, and that echo of her father's voice: "Be bound here for eternity," it began. She tuned the rest of it out, instead seeking to replicate her earlier actions and release the demon that was held behind the barrier, intent on killing it.
This one turned out to be some sort of abomination, and it summoned the same sort of rock wraiths that Hawke, Varric, Fenris, and Anders had had to fight in the Deep Roads after Bartrand screwed them over. Hawke and Varric shared an uncomfortable look between them, at that; neither of them wanted to get into that kind of situation again, but now, being trapped in this place and having to fight the things? It didn't look good.
"I may have left the Circle," her Father's voice said, loudly, echoing off the walls. "But I took a vow. My magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base." Hawke started; her father had told her that so many times, growing up. Let your magic serve that which is best in you, Marian, not that which is most base. She had heard it hundreds, thousands of times, since her magic first manifested itself. She had heard him say the same thing to Bethany. Carver met her eyes, the familiarity of the phrase obviously stirring memories in himself, as well.
"This is telling," she said, to the group in general. "Not sure what it's telling, but it's certainly telling something."
"Father wasn't a Warden, was he?" Carver asked her.
"I don't know," she answered honestly. "He never told me if he was, and neither did Mother, if she knew." Hawke rested for a moment, leaning back against the thick wall, hands resting on her thighs. "It would explain why we're in some sort of Grey Warden… Prison, I suppose, if he had been." She took a moment and ran a Healing spell through herself, and then a Rejuvenation spell; Anders, she noticed, was doing similar to himself, and then Merrill. Hawke extended the spell to the two fighters, and, before too long, everyone had had it cast upon them. Down here, with the darkspawn, there was no telling when they would be able to rest again, and they might be relying on the Rejuvenation spells for quite a while. They were not as good as actual rest and food, but they would do, until someplace safer was discovered.
The foresight to cast the spells was rather welcome when, not very far past where they fought the rock wraiths and abomination, Hawke and her crew ran into more darkspawn. There was a bigger variety of darkspawn here than the previous ones they had gone up against, however, and the genlocks had larger shields that were harder to get past. Even the mages' magic did less good on those things, and they wound up taking much longer to kill as well as doing more damage in general.
It wasn't too long after that when they came across another one of the shield-barrier setups. Hawke didn't waste time; as soon as she heard her father's voice, binding the spirit, she moved, touching each of the shields and then approaching the final barrier. Just as was the case the other two times, the barrier came down and there was a demon –a desire demon, this time, built in such a way that Hawke, every time she encountered one of the wretched things, felt like so much less of a woman because she didn't look like that. Few women actually did look like that, but that was small comfort to Hawke—along with its minions.
Hawke fought quickly, and with little patience. She wanted to hear what her father would say this time. It had been eight years since she had last heard her father's voice, and then it was through the veil of sickness and weakness. She missed him with an impossible ache, and these teasing snippets from him were maddening. She knew Carver had to feel the same way, for all that Malcolm Hawke had spent more time with his daughters, gifted with magic as they were, than with his son.
When the last shade went down, Hawke stilled immediately, and she caught Carver doing the same out of her peripheral vision. The others were winding down, from having their blood heated, of course, but Hawke and Carver wanted as much of their father as they could get.
"I've bought our freedom, Leandra. We can go home now. Us, and the baby. We'll be together. I hope it takes after you, love. I would wish this magic on no one. May they never learn what I've done here."
Her eyes went to Carver, and she knew her mouth was agape as much as his was. She closed it with an audible clicking of her teeth. "The baby? That… that was me, he was talking about."
"When did Father do this?" Carver asked, coming towards his sister slowly. "When did he have time for this? I had hoped that we would get answers, but… I don't think we're going to find out much more than this, sister."
Hawke shook her head sadly and scuffed the toe of her boot on the stone floor. "I don't think we will, brother," she agreed. She did not need to turn her head to see that the touch on her arm was Fenris, and she could not meet anyone else's eyes, in case she mistook sympathy for pity.
"We should move on," Carver said, after clearing his throat, an echo of the phrase Fenris so often used.
"Yes," was all Hawke could think to say in agreement. They should move on.