Chapter 35 The Anvil of the Void and Sky-Fire
Once again, they were on the march, one foot in front of the other. Darkspawn barred their way, viciously identical. Finally, after three long marches, Oghren triumphantly called out, "We've made it! Around the bend is the road to Bownammar, City of the Dead!"
A huge stone bridge spanned the gorge, and on the other side were gigantic gates that, according to Oghren, could only be the gates of the Fortress of Bownammar, once the home of the Legion of the Dead.
"Of course, the Legion still exists," Oghren rumbled. "They just don't control Bownammar. It belongs to the darkspawn now."
Nonetheless, the Legion was still out here, and still fighting. Another turn led them to one end of the bridge, and directly into a battle. "Charge!" Conrí roared, and they joined in, fighting beside the famed Legion of the Dead. Some of the warriors sported the tattoos of the casteless, for in no other context besides joining the Grey Wardens were the casteless legally permitted to bear arms.
The commander himself was heavily tattooed. He called out to Conrí as he kicked a dead hurlock aside. "You're far from the surface, stranger!"
Conrí tapped his chestplate by way of introduction. "Conrí. Grey Wardens."
"Kardol. Legion of the Dead."
There was no time for further ceremony. Before long the Wardens were moving further along the bridge, ahead of the Legion, meeting small bands of their mutual enemy. Tira, Brosca, Xolana and Kiba ran beside Conrí, freezing, stunning and knocking the darkspawn off their feet, whilst the warriors behind them hewed the creatures apart. Magic and arrows from further away sought their targets. They ran all the way across the bridge, hardly slowed by the darkspawn coming to meet them.
At the other end were the Gates of Bownammar, held by ranks of genlock archers. The massed darkspawn were consumed by a storm of ice and fire. The mages stank of lyrium, the air around them crackling with power. Dim shapes tottered and fell, shrouded in steam. A limping ogre blundered out of the whiteness. Conrí bull-rushed at the thing, running past to hamstring the legs. When the massive creature buckled, Conrí's Greatsword bit into its neck. The ogre clutched at its throat and sank ponderously to the stones, measuring its length at last.
The Legion caught up with them. Kardol looked up at the De facto Warden Commander with some curiosity. "You've got skills, Warden, if not much sense." His eyes slid to Oghren, and he grunted, "Drunks make poor allies."
Conrí was perfectly aware that it was so, but Oghren's supply of strong spirits was long-since consumed, and the berserker was as sober as he was likely to ever be. Instead, he questioned Kardol about Branka and the Anvil of the Void. He was convinced that Branka had been dead for two years, and that the Anvil was a fairy tale. He thought their plan to travel beyond the Gates of Bownammar further proof of their insanity, but did not bother to talk the Wardens and their unlikely allies out of it. He wished them luck and turned away.
"Boss!" shouted Oghren. "Over here!" The dwarf was standing in the mouth of a tunnel that seemed to wind past the Gates. Conrí walked over, Koun trotting at his heels.
"Look!" Oghren pointed at the tunnel wall, squinting. "More chips were taken here. Branka came this way for sure!"
Alistair looked at Conrí and he joined the templar to talk to him privately. "At least we're on the trail," Alistair said quietly. "It looks like we can go another seven days — I mean, marches, or whatever they call days around here — before we absolutely have to turn back. If you want to try, I'm with you."
"It's going to be bad, Alistair. From now on it's nothing but darkspawn all the way. I find it hard to believe that Branka survived, even with two hundred followers and good equipment. How would they reprovision themselves? There's been no communication with the rest of Orzammar in two years."
The likeliest scenario was that Branka and all her people had been massacred shortly after she passed the Gates. If they had survived, it could not have been for long. They might eat deepstalker and the occasional Bronto, but in the end they would have turned to the darkspawn, or equally horribly, on themselves. At that, if they turned on themselves, at least they would not become ghouls. It was in every way appalling, but Conrí had to have an answer that Bhelen would accept.
Thus they continued on their journey, following the signs; through mobs of darkspawn, traps and ambushes, ancient tombs and rifled sarcophagi. The name 'City of the Dead' was no exaggeration. Bownammar was nothing as much as a vast cemetery. That, too, disturbed Conrí, who found the whole idea of bodies stuffed away in stone boxes to slowly rot — or, as here, to be pawed at by the darkspawn and curious adventurers — profoundly disgusting.
"Well," Alistair said, attempting to make light of it, "That's new. Anybody know what that is?"
Conrí shook his head, gazing at the long streaks of red, fleshy matter spilling across the stone floor. "There are worse things than monotony, I suppose," he murmured.
Xolana kicked at the red stuff, and then backed away. "It's soft," she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "I think… maybe… it's sort of… alive."
Erin took a swing at it. Very thin ichor oozed from it. The mages leaned over, and Tristan pulled Xolana's hand away. "Don't touch it. I can say with an expert's certainty that this is Bad Stuff. I don't know what kind, but I know it is."
There was more of it, and it was everywhere, thick and ropy, covering the floor and walls, dripping down from the ceiling, forming nasty, flesh colored pockets and sacs.
Conrí grimaced. Duncan had informed him what these were once he'd received his promotion and assignment to Orzammar. Pulling a torch from Alistair's hand, he pressed the end to one of the sacs. The greasy coating caught easily. "Burn them all."
"What… what are they?" Serena asked warily.
Conrí was silent for a long moment as he burned another sac. "Darkspawn have to come from somewhere."
Everyone capable paled and joined him in incinerating the sacs.
"First day they come and catch everyone."
"Second day they beat us and eat some for meat."
"She was captured by the creatures?" Morrigan mused. "Why would they have let her live?"
"Fifth day they return, and it's another girl's turn."
"Seventh day she grew as in her mouth they spew."
"Eighth day we hated as she is violated."
The women looked at each other, expressions of confusion turning to horror as they began to realize the personal, awful, and very specific danger they were in.
"Ninth day she grins, and devours her kin;
Now she does feast, as she's become the beast…"
It wasn't long before they came upon the source of the voice intoning the insane doggerel.
"What is this? A human? Bland and unlikely." A dwarven woman sat hunched over in the room's centre, curled into herself, periodically stuffing great chunks of raw meat from the great mounds of flesh piled up around her into her mouth carelessly, uncaring of the mess of clotted blood and meat gobbets around her mouth that she made no effort to clean away. The taint was much further advanced in her, dark splotches of blackness dotting her face and under her eyes, giving the pallid, near-scaly skin a mottled look. Pale, cracked lips encrusted with sores and other diseased cuts periodically muttered the deranged poem they'd heard echoing through the tunnels. Yet, the perhaps most disturbing part of her appearance was her eyes…
"I know this drooling moss-licker..." Oghren's voice was husky as he peered at the woman. "It's Hespith; she was captain of Branka's household guard."
"Feeding time brings only kin and clan. I am cruel to myself. You are a dream of strangers' faces and open doors..." the woman muttered to herself more than anyone. She pushed dirty hair that may have once been blonde but now looked more of a dirty white, falling out in clumps and leaving large bald patches all over her scalp, out of her face, revealing hollowed cheeks smeared with black ichor. Behind him, Conrí vaguely heard Xolana excuse herself and flee back into the tunnel from which they'd come, the sound of her retching carrying to them. Not that Conrí blamed her: no doubt, the young mage was wondering if this was how she might have ended up. The same thought that was occurring to the Warden-Commander himself. Would he and Alistair one day look like this deformed, diseased creature when their time came and the taint ran its course, calling them to their final rest?
"I-is this darkspawn corruption? I've never seen anything like it before," Wynne's voice conveyed both fear and disgust at the unknown before her.
'Nor have I,' Conrí thought; this woman was unlike any ghoul he'd seen before. From what he could feel, the taint within her didn't seem to simply be poisoning her — instead, it seemed to be mutating, changing the flesh it infected, increasing growth and health, altering the body to better suit certain needs. Koun took one sniff of Hespith and then retreated with a whimper behind his master's legs, growling at the tainted woman plaintively, tail firmly between his legs.
"Corruption!" the dwarf hissed, her head pricking up at the voice, her mouth contorted into a snaggle-toothed grimace. "The men did that! Their wounds festered and their minds fled... They are like dogs... marched again, the first to die." The ghoulish woman looked up then, her eyes wide and staring in mortification at some sight only she could see. "Not us, not me. Not Laryn. We are not cut. We are fed. Friends and flesh and blood and bile and… and..."
Hespith collapsed in a heap, uncaring that she was wallowing in filth, her fingers running through the tainted mush coating the floor, the nails long and claw-like, blackened with filth, raking furrows across her mottled skin as she clutched herself, curling into a fetal ball. "All I could do was wish Laryn went first. I wished it upon her so that I would be spared… but I had to watch," the dwarf continued to moan, her voice little more than a ragged whisper. "I had to see the change. How do you endure that? How did Branka endure?"
"What change? What did you endure? What... what are they doing?" Erin asked, immediately regretting the question, certain she wasn't going to like the answer.
"What they are allowed to do. What they think they must. And Branka..." The woman licked her hands, hungrily licking the blackened blood off them and Leliana was gone, joining Xolana to vomit in disgust at the horrific sight of how low this dwarf had fallen in her madness.
Oghren stepped forward then, pressing his way past Conrí, seized Hespith roughly by the front of the tattered scraps of clothing that clung to her emaciated frame and roughly shook her. "Where is she, Hespith, you crazy old Bronto? Where's Branka?"
It was the wrong thing to say. With an angry snarl, Hespith lashed out like a cat, forcing Oghren to stagger back, more from shock than anything else, and land on his arse in the muck. Healing energy leapt from Wynne's fingers, cleansing the scratch marks of any possible infection, but Oghren didn't notice, staring up in mute shock at the fury blazing in Hespith's dead, mad eyes.
"Do not talk of Branka! What she did… Ancestors preserve us, I was her captain and… I did not stop her. Her lover... and I could not turn her. Forgive her... but no, she cannot be forgiven. Not for what she did. Not for what she has become."
"What has she done? Tell us and we can help you end it!" Wynne pleaded her voice calm and even though her fear was apparent. She tried desperately to appeal to whatever rationality was left in the dwarf's mind, but Hespith's only reply was a deranged laugh — a chilling sound that made it quite clear there was nothing left of the woman beyond the insanity that had consumed her.
"End it? I am full of them, just a step away from Laryn! Ending it means accepting and that… T-that I won't do! I will not become what I have seen! Not Laryn! Not Branka!" Hespith wailed as she fled, scrambling like a monkey on all fours over the piles of raw meat and mutilated bodies, out through a stone doorway and into the corridors beyond.
"Hespith said lover," Oghren muttered darkly. "Branka's lover."
"She was... she was out of her mind, Oghren," Wynne said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "She was raving. That could have meant anything."
"Nah, there's got to be more than that," Oghren growled. "Hespith! Hespith! Get back here now, you moss-licking old coot and start talking sense!" The dwarf bellowed as he hefted his maul and raced out of the room, through the door Hespith had fled out of.
"Oghren, wait!" Conrí yelled, racing after the fleeing form of the berserk dwarf, barely hearing the others bringing up the rear, his own mind dreading the confirmation of the crazed dwarf's words.
"They took Laryn," Hespith muttered, her voice echoing through the tunnel. "They made her eat the others, our friends. She tore off her husband's face and drank his blood. And while she ate, she grew. She swelled and turned gray and she smelled like them. They remade her in their image. Then she made more of them..."
"Oh, no..." Conrí whispered.
"Conrí, that sounds like—" Xolana swallowed and licked her lips nervously, looking very trouble. "Do you think…?" She glanced over her shoulder at the members of the team who were following close behind, trying to give them her best look of reassurance but actually looking for reassurance herself.
"I'm afraid so," Conrí muttered. "Maybe we can slip around it."
"Slip around what?" Leliana breathed.
"The reason I was so hesitant to take you, Xolana and Morrigan down here," Conrí rumbled.
Xolana took Leliana's hand. "Just... let's hope we manage to get past it."
"Well, so long as it doesn't mean leaving danger behind for others to find, I'm all for evading this — whatever it is. These endless tunnels are starting to make me feel like it's hard to breathe."
"Yeah, I know the feeling. Come on. Oghren, you, Erin, Shale and I will take front. Leliana, you and Tira hang back. Xolana, Wynne, Tristan support when and where you can."
Xolana nodded and went to walk next to Wynne, still looking troubled.
Shale gave a derisive snort. "I actually rather like these caves. I don't comprehend its issue."
"Well, Wilhelm found you in the deeps. Makes sense," Conrí muttered absentmindedly.
"Quit yer complaining," Oghren growled. "I don't get yet stupid topside problems either."
"Maybe one day you well get it," Conrí sighed, before suddenly silencing and looking alertly ahead. "Hold." Conrí held up a hand.
"What is that smell?" Leliana gagged and coughed.
"Oh, sod..." Oghren rumbled, knowing that scent all too well.
Xolana's fingers itched at hilts of her daggers, nostrils flaring as she looked around wildly, trying to locate the source. "Keep calm now, Amell... Calm..." she mumbled pointlessly to herself.
"What is it NOW!?" Shale growled. "Are the soft ones getting "cold feet" or whatever they call it?"
"Shale," Conrí swallowed hard. "We're definitely gonna need your help — we can't slip around it."
Leliana gave whispered yell, "What in the Maker's name is it?!"
Conrí opened his mouth to give the dreaded answer, but Hespith's dull voice cut him off before he could. "Broodmother..."
Xolana's color drained completely from her face, her worst fear confirmed. She only started recovering after a few moments of Wynne shaking her, but even then the young mage looked beyond shaken.
"Is it mushy? Can I crush it?" Shale asked gleefully.
"Please do!" Conrí bellowed in lieu of a war cry, leading the charge with Oghren and Shale close on his heels.
The bloated, stinking behemoth at the far end of the chamber was taller, broader, and doubtless weighed several tones more than both of the ogres they'd just slain. The archdemon had been terrifying enough, but there had been a form of twisted beauty to Urthemiel, a sense of power and majesty about the creature it had been before the taint warped it into the monster it had become. There was nothing redeeming about the foul creature sitting at the other side of the cavern, however. A huge, ponderous belly, with twin rows of fleshy, sagging teats like those of a sow's rose and fell with every rasping breath it drew, though Alistair was amazed its weight hadn't already crushed its lungs. Its leathery and pale, almost albino skin, devoid of any form of light in its blood-soaked lair, was greasy, owing to the oily, foul-smelling secretions oozing from every pore. There were no legs visible, nor did he think there was any sort of limbs strong enough to support the beast's ponderous bulk, but from beneath the folds of fat at the body's base, multiple appendages protruded, squid-like tentacles emerging through the bloody sludge coating the chamber floor, reaching out to grasp at its next meal. At the very back of its swollen, insect-like abdomen, Alistair could see a bulging ovipositor, laying more of the fleshy, membranous eggs they'd seen littering the tunnels, the newborn darkspawn inside them already gestating, yet more soldiers for Urthemiel's horde.
Other tendrils slithered across the floor of the cavern, undulating sluggishly in the thick layer of sludge that was the source of the stomach-churning stench: the creature's bodily wastes, oozing from some unseen orifice and mixed with the rotting carcasses of whatever creatures had been dumped there for the beast to gorge itself upon. The unholy mixture of rotting flesh, blood, vomit, excrement and Maker knew what else, of which the creature's tentacles scooped up great gouts, formed fleshy mire all around it. The tentacles lifted them up to the creature's gaping mouth; the only way it could feed itself, for while the body had swelled to monstrous proportions, the arms were stunted and tiny in comparison. It could not hope to reach the floor of the cavern or fit into the largest of the tunnels exiting it, could not move to hunt for prey, and could not even reach its own mouth. It was trapped here by its size, wallowing in its own filth, able to do nothing but eat and reproduce, subsumed forever to the will and urges of the creatures that had mutated the individual it once was into the aberration it had become.
Yet, the worst thing about it were its eyes — small, piggy-black orbs that had widened hungrily at the prospect of fresh meat. The creature let loose a ear-splitting scream, part cry of rage, part deranged laugh and, as its gaze bored into Alistair's, he had a terrible suspicion that somewhere, a small part of the woman this monstrosity had been was still in there, fully aware of what had been done to it and what it had become, driven to a point no sane individual should go. Little wonder those eyes were clearly brimming with madness; seeing such a creature in the flesh would be enough to destroy lesser minds, so who knew what actually being made to suffer the horrific, agonizing attentions of the darkspawn would do to someone?
His mortification was such that Alistair only just managed to raise his shield in time to block the first tentacle that would otherwise have struck him full in his chest like a battering ram, sending him sprawling into the foul-smelling ooze. Conrí let out a yell as he felt another tentacle coil like a python around his right shin, retracting towards its host body with incredible speed, the Broodmother licking its lips hungrily at the prospect of fresh meat almost in reach.
Just as quickly, the Broodmothers hungry snuffling became a yowl of pain as an arrow struck it in the left eye; the creature fell back, its arms vainly trying to reach its face to pull the shaft out. Conrí chanced a look behind him, to see Leliana, another arrow in flight and the bard's hand notching yet another to the bowstring. Her expression was calm and resolute as she channeled her fear and horror into rage, an emotion far more useful in the battle to come. It was advice Conrí chose to take.
"KILL IT! KILL THIS BEAST!" Conrí roared at the top of his lungs, leaping to his feet and drawing his sword free. There could be no more room for pity or mercy, no sympathy for the person the monster had been. Laryn could not be saved, only put out of her misery.
The Broodmother let out a furious shriek, directing the full brunt of its gaze at Conrí, its remaining eye brimming with undiluted hate. The Warden doubted the creature had understood what he'd said, but considering the half dozen armed figures closing around it, the giant darkspawn had to know it was threatened. Two more tentacles darted out like snakes, but Conrí was ready this time; leaping away from their strikes, Conrí slashed out with Ageless, the ancient blade he found in the palace, severing both with ease. The stumps bled black ichor as the wailing monster drew them back to its body. Three more tentacles burst out of the ground, the first of which Conrí sliced in half as it lunged, after which he pinned the second under his foot and hacked it off, only to then be swept off his feet as the third tentacle curled around his ankles. Before it could take advantage, Koun and Kiba leapt to the attack, seizing the tentacle and tearing it up out of the ground in a spray of dark blood like uprooting a weed. At the same time as he got back to his feet, Conrí heard a whoosh of flames roaring to life as Xolana let loose a fireball that slammed into the monster's right shoulder, setting the oily secretions coating it ablaze. All the while, Wynne and Leliana threw glass bottles that smashed against the beast's chest, drenching its sagging teats in acid, and now an edge of fear crept into the Broodmother's wails. It lashed out again, its tentacles cracking like whips, but the warriors hacked their way through the fleshy, suckered thicket with ease.
They had it now. With enough of its tentacles severed, there wouldn't be enough for the creature to defend itself against all of them and while some kept it distracted, the others could move in for the kill. "Made immobile and helpless by its own mutations, it won't stand a chance," Conrí thought as he advanced with the others, grinning savagely.
Just as he raised his sword once more, the Broodmother threw back its head and let loose an ear-splitting scream that reverberated off the cavern walls, echoing long after the beast had stopped. For a moment, it felt as though the world stood still, the silence and tension growing thick enough to cut with a knife, but soon it became clear that its cry had been heard.
"It's calling for help!" Conrí roared, ripping his belt knife from its sheath and hurling it, the blade spinning end over end and slamming into the neck of one of the two dozen darkspawn emerging from the other side passages into the cavern. Leliana spun round and shot an arrow point blank into the chest of a charging hurlock, dropping it and causing two more behind it to trip over its corpse. Xolana and Wynne likewise spun round, Wynne conjuring a jet of ice onto the floor that sent a trio of genlocks sprawling to the ground, magical lightning from her counterpart's fingertips fatally electrocuting the downed creatures. Meanwhile Oghren whirled around like a dervish, snapping the legs of any darkspawn that got in the way of his hammer.
Conrí made to fight at the dwarf's side as he smashed the chest of a hurlock even as the mabari tore out its throat, but Oghren waved him away. "No, me, the hairball and the walking rockery will handle this bunch! You, the elf and the ladies concentrate on Fatso over there!"
Conrí nodded and returned to facing the Broodmother, only to hear a scream of fright as Leliana was lifted by her leg by yet another tentacle that had burst up from the ground behind her. Before it could retract to deposit her in its waiting grasp, Wynne sent a boulder hurtling straight into the left side of the beast's skull, crushing the temple and the eye socket, driving bone shards into the remaining eye. The monster's already horrid screams only increased as its arms tried to clutch feebly at its blinded eyes, dropping Leliana in the bloody slime right in front of it in its agony. Conrí made to go to her side before pressing the advantage, but a trio of genlocks intercepted him, though Conrí could not tell whether they were still trying to separate Leliana from the others or defend the Broodmother. The closest lost its head to Conrí's sword, but the remaining two leapt out of reach of the slash, trying to take advantage of the opening. Conrí managed to block the incoming stab and slammed the pommel into one's chest and lashed out with a backhand into the other's forehead. Out of the corner of his eye, Conrí could see Leliana getting back to her feet.
Leliana shook her head to clear it, getting groggily to her feet. The screams of the blinded Broodmother were ear-splitting, only intensifying as Xolana bathed its face and chest in fire conjured from her hands. Morrigan, caught off guard by her friend's rage, soon joined Xolana in bathing the beast in flame.
"Die! Die, you wretched thing, just DIE!" the amethyst eyed mage screamed at the top of her lungs. Leliana could well understand the panic-driven fury that the woman was feeling, because the same thoughts were going through her head; had things been more different, could the taint have forced the same horrific transformations on Xolana? Could she have become the next monster to rot in the darkness, birthing more and more of the foul monsters that had poisoned and mutated her until the mercy of death finally claimed her?
Leliana knew what it was like to be violated, to be used to satisfy men's cruel lusts and desires for their pleasures through her pain but this… this was beyond even that horrific sort of defilement. No matter what this beast was, once it had been a woman just like her, had likely had plans, dreams, loves and no one deserved to be left to linger like this for the rest of their life, denied passage to the Maker's or the Ancestors' side, kept as a deformed and deranged slave to satisfy the depraved lusts and urges of the darkspawn. "I will free you, sister, I swear it!"
The Broodmother was blind in both eyes, unable to see how close Leliana was, its sense of smell overwhelmed by the other fetid odors to catch her scent. It was their best opportunity, but the others were surrounded by tentacles and darkspawn desperately trying to defend their matriarch; it would have to be her.
Putting aside her bow, instead unsheathing one of her daggers and the brutal-looking axe she'd claimed from the spider nest, Leliana broke into a run. Leaping onto the Broodmother's insectile abdomen in a cat-like crouch, she briefly found purchase before rocketing upwards, trying to gain a hand-hold on the greasy skin of the Broodmother's back. Her left hand found purchase in the fatty folds, but her right lost its grip and she would have gone sliding off had she not swung out with her weapon at the last second, the dragonbone axe blade sinking into the meaty shoulder. The Broodmother, alerted to her presence now, begin to buck and thrash, its blind head swinging wildly from side to side, as well as using several of its tentacles to try and pry her off, but she stabbed out with perfect precision as the tentacles lunged, fending them off until her torso was level with the beast's neck, wrapping an arm around its throat to keep herself in place, trying not to vomit in disgust at being in close proximity to such foulness.
The smell of the creature was even worse this close, but Leliana somehow suppressed the rising urge to gag as she left the axe embedded in the colossal darkspawn's shoulder and drew the Thorn of the Dead Gods in her right hand. The leathery skin and layers of blubbery fat at the back were too thick for the dagger to penetrate deep enough to do any serious injury, but she could see a far more effective point to strike.
Plunging the dagger in her left hand at the juncture between neck and shoulder, she managed to get the Thorn under the multiple chins as the Broodmother pulled its head back to scream in pain, driving the dagger into the soft skin at the throat. The silverite's cold bite drew yet another howl from the beast as it realized it was in mortal danger, its desperate thrashings to try and shake her off only increasing. Even so, Leliana evaded the grasping appendages trying to seize her and with a guttural snarl, the bard pushed the dagger in as deep as it would go, then tore it across the throat. The tough skin, flesh and fat resisted for a moment, but couldn't stop the razor sharpness from cutting through with lethal effect. The Broodmother's screams reached a horrific pitch as its lifeblood flooded down its bloated belly in a jet-black fountain, its strength swiftly ebbing away as tentacles thrashed spasmodically in its death throes, weakening gurgles intermingling with the bard's joyous cry of triumph...
Until she felt the tentacle coiling around her belt, dragging her off her perch.
She could feel herself be tossed through the air with considerable force, sent hurtling towards the cave wall with quite some speed.
"Oh merde," was her last coherent thought just before her head connected with the stone.
With a few final shudders, the Broodmother was finally still.
Xolana wiped sweat off her brow. "Is it finally over? Is it really gone?" she asked, finally starting to return to her normal self.
"Where's Leliana?" Conrí asked, looking around.
Xolana's dread began rising again. "She was just he-" she looked around hectically until her eyes fell upon the unconscious bard being dragged off in the distance. The mage's vision went red. "Leliana!" she shrieked, adrenaline and panic on high, and Xolana cut her palms without even thinking to summoned a hoard of skeletons to slow the darkspawn down and protect Leliana until the group could get close enough.
"Oh hell no!" Conrí snarled as he charged.
"More to squish!" Shale bellowed, storming forward after Xolana's skeletons.
"I ain't letting this happen again…" Oghren growled mostly to himself as he dashed forward on the last of his energy.
After the panic over the Broodmother and the high adrenaline levels, this situation finally made Xolana snap. Having already activated her blood magic anyway, the dark haired mage unleashed a torrent of vile blood attacks on the darkspawn who'd captured Leliana. She didn't hold back even an inch, using Blood Wound to try and cripple as many of them as possible and even using Blood Control on the one holding the bard, forcing it to bring her back as the group was still running to catch up.
Shale was the first to reach the group and started pounding its way through the ones Xolana had successfully crippled. Tira, meanwhile, picked off ones that were still moving with terrifyingly accurate headshots, still fighting with her bow, though her number of arrows was dwindling fast.
Conrí and Oghren cut down those left alive. The commander, leaving his blade in the chest of a shriek, ran over to Leliana, who had woken as soon as Shale had thundered in and was continuing to panic. "Leli, Leli, calm down you're alright!"
The traumatized bard was damn near hysterical. "They were — they were..!"
"I'm here," Conrí hugged her as best he could. "I will never let them take you." Leliana slowly began to calm down. "I've got you." Conrí muttered in her ear, reassuring her gently.
Xolana meanwhile was still in a vicious blood frenzy until the realization that Leliana was ok finally hit her. She just about managed to come over, smile a relieved smile, stop tapping into the power of her blood only to then promptly collapse from the blood loss. She was not unconscious, luckily, but too weak and dizzy to stay on her feet.
"Urgh..." Oghren toed Xolana carefully. "Commander? We're all happy that Leliana is ok but... I think we're gonna have to carry this one."
"Xolana!" Leliana scrambled to her feet. "Wynne you need to help her!"
Conrí strode over, kneeled down and lifted Xolana's head onto his leg. "Come on, Amell. We didn't piss of a dragon to save you only to have you die from blood loss. You have to stay awake."
Xolana, still somewhat delirious, mumbled out, "Conrí? Dragon? Stop being silly — Leli isn't a dragon... But she's safe, right...?"
Wynne grabbed Xolana's hands and began healing them, tutting all the while. "You and I need to have a long conversation, young lady."
Xolana cringed as Wynne addressed her in that strict voice. "Sorry Wynne... please don't tell Cullen... He'll lock me up and leer at me all day again..."
"Can I shut it up? Please?" Shale grumbled. "Crush its skull, perhaps?"
"I'm pretty sure crushing skulls isn't how you heal someone," Oghren commented dryly, eyeing Wynne's attempts to heal her younger counterpart with some residual suspicion towards magic.
"Come on, Shale," Serena stood and slapped the golem on the back, trying to find a more constructive outlet for Shale's aggression. "Let's check the perimeter, we might find other things for you to crush, ok?"
"Right behind you, Princess," Garik remarked, earning him a backhand to the stomach from Serena.
"Is she going to be okay, Wynne?" Leliana asked worriedly.
"Yes," the elder mage nodded. "Thankfully it's just blood loss and magical exhaustion. With a good rest she'll be up and about shortly." Following her statement, she poured a health potion down Xolana's throat with, perhaps, a bit more force than strictly necessary.
"Is she alright to move?" Conrí asked, giving Wynne a slight frown at her roughness.
"Yes. I don't think she'd much appreciate being here longer than she has to," Wynne grumped, pouring a small amount of lyrium into Xolana's mouth with noticeably more gentleness.
Conrí lifted Xolana off the ground with ease after she'd swallowed and followed Serena, Garik and Shale with Leliana right next to the pair.
"I could use a drink. Or several," Oghren grumped.
"Might I trouble you for one?" Wynne asked.
"Knew you'd be back," Oghren chuckled and took a pull from his flask before handing it to Wynne.
"Mm," Wynne hummed, enjoying the flavor. "You must tell me your recipe."
"You got it."
A few hours later, Conrí came back to the camp, toweling his hair off from the mineral spring he'd bathed in. The water had been much too harsh to drink so they'd elected to use it to bath.
Leliana followed with a towel around her neck. "How is she?" she asked Wynne.
"Stable. She should wake anytime now," the elder mage commented, brushing out her white hair.
Xolana was still sleep mumbling about Dragons, Cullen, Leliana and, most unsettlingly, blood.
"I have an idea," Conrí said with an evil grin. He leaned down and barked, "Xolana wake up! Leliana's running around naked and you're missing it."
Xolana's eyes flew open as she tried to shoot upright but then quickly collapsed back down onto the bedroll because she was still a bit dizzy from the blood loss. After a few moments she recovered enough to glare at Conrí. "You are an evil commander, Conrí. Evil."
Conrí smirked, his steely blue eyes glinting with mischief. "You love it."
"Why do I always have to be naked during these wake up calls?" Leliana wondered, a bit pink in the cheeks.
"Because a naked Leliana is an irresistible Leliana? How could I possibly sleep through that?" Xolana asked with her trademark smirk.
Wynne put a hand over her eyes. "Children..."
Xolana abruptly realized Wynne was still there and started remembering why she was in that position in the first place. A feeling of dread began to pool in her stomach. She cleared her throat after a somewhat awkward silence. "So, anyway, Leliana, I'm glad you're ok. You had me really worried there..." The entire time she spoke, Xolana kept glancing at Wynne, wondering when the older woman was going to start taking her apart.
"I'm sorry," Leliana mumbled. "And thank you so much for helping me. If you hadn't I might be-"
"Hey, don't think like that," Conrí interrupted. "What matters is you're safe and the Broodmother is dead."
Xolana still shuddered at the mention of that word. "... Yeah. Quite," she stared at Wynne for a few more moments, then sighed because she hated herself for what she was about to say next. "So," she hesitated. "I appreciate that you are both here and all, but I think Wynne and I need to talk for a bit..."
Conrí caught the awkward stare. "Sure. When you're done, there's a mineral spring over there. I'm sure you want a bath."
Xolana nodded but mumbled to herself. "If I'm still alive, that is."
Conrí nodded. "Come on, Leli. Need to make sure the Dwarves and the golem aren't getting into too much trouble." Leliana sent Xolana an encouraging smile as she left with Conrí.
Xolana stared awkwardly in silence at Wynne for a while. Eventually it became so tense the loquacious mage couldn't really shut up anymore. "Wynne, I-.."
Wynne held up a hand to quiet her. "Xolana Amell, do you have any idea how dark the magic you used was?" Xolana cringed, shut her mouth and nodded. "The Magisters of the Tevinter Imperium thrived on such magic. What possessed you to resort to such abominable spells?"
Xolana sat in awkward silence for a bit while trying to find words. "Wynne I-, I'm sorry but I just..."
"But you what?" Wynne prompted sharply.
"Look I... I got scared," Xolana admitted. "I got so incredibly scared. The Broodmother and the constant underground and darkness and then, when I saw Leliana being taken I-, I snapped. I didn't even mean to use so many spells. At first I was just going to use one spell to even the playing field, but then it just..."
"Xolana, I understand you wanted to protect your friend, but you need to control yourself better. You are a Grey Warden now. That means many eyes will be on you. The templars might not be able to get their hands on you now, but they can make life very difficult for both you and your compatriots."
"Wynne, I know that, but..." Xolana began sounding more and more scared. "I don't know what happened. I've never had a problem controlling it before. I was always wary about using it, always holding back, never willing to give in because I know... I know how dangerous, how dark this magic is, how easy it is to lose yourself in it. But today, it was like all of that suddenly no longer mattered," Xolana furrowed her brows. "No — not even that. It was like all of that was gone. None of that even existed in my mind. There was just a friend in danger, and the power to protect them. Nothing else even registered."
Wynne frowned. "Has this happened before?"
Xolana shook her head. "Never like this. Right at the beginning when Uldred convinced us to learn from him, to follow him — it was never this extreme, but it was intoxicating. Most of us were overwhelmed by the power. When I saw the first of us go all but completely bloodlust-crazy, I started being careful. I've never let it go this far."
"This sounds like Conrí. Just after he drank Draco's blood, his temper was so short… Did Draco give you his blood?"
Xolana shook her head. "I was there, but no. I didn't have his blood."
"And you've made no deals?" Wynne pushed.
Xolana's head shook once again. "Nothing, Wynne. It's just this power. This darkness."
Wynne nodded. "Then perhaps I can help. When I was younger my magic used to flare up. My mentor taught me to meditate. Would that be something you'd be willing to try?"
"I'll try anything if it gives me a chance to not lose myself," Xolana muttered.
"Very well. Go have your bath. After supper, we will begin," Wynne prompted.
Xolana nodded but didn't look like she was about to move. She looked at Wynne curiously. "Wynne, you..."
"Yes? Is something wrong?"
"You are... not angry at me?" Xolana asked. "I honestly thought you would... well, insist that Conrí give me over to the Templars. I could even understand why you would."
"Even if I wanted to, you know as well I do Conrí would nail me to a wall," Wynne chuckled, remembering how firmly the young man stood his ground. "I'd much rather help you."
"You..." Xolana finally managed to crack a smile again. "You've changed as well, haven't you? Thank you Wynne." Xolana hesitated at first, but then sat up enough to drag the white haired mage into a hug.
Wynne was surprised at first but returned the hug. "It's alright, dear. I'll help you get through this."
A few days later, the group finally found where Branka had camped most recently. The fire was snuffed mere hours before.
"If Branka is anywhere, this has to be it," Oghren rumbled. "She will not be unprepared."
Conrí glanced at the dwarf and nodded.
Xolana, bursting with energy now, nearly shouted, "Well what are we waiting for, then!?"
"Calm it, Amell," Tristan advised. "We have no idea what might be waiting for us there."
"He's right, we must be cautious," Tira agreed, arrow notched just in case.
Conrí spun around as a trap was activated behind them, bringing up a rock wall. "Fuck..."
A middle aged dwarven woman strode onto the overhanging plateau in front of them. "Let me be blunt with you. After all this time, my tolerance for social graces is fairly limited. That doesn't bother you, I hope."
"Well, shave my back and call me an elf! Branka?!" Oghren crowed. "By the Stone, I barely recognize you!"
"Oghren," Branka nodded, obviously not as pleased at this reunion as her husband. "It figures you would eventually find your way here. Hopefully you can find your way back more easily. And how shall I address you? Hired sword of the latest lordling to come looking for me? Or the only one who could tolerate Oghren's ale breath?"
"Be respectful, woman!" Oghren growled, surprising Serena with the change in tone. "You're talking to a Grey Warden!"
"Ah, so an important errand girl then. I suppose something serious has happened. Is Endrin dead? That seems the most likely. He was on the old and wheezy side."
Serena grit her teeth. "My father is dead, yes, and the Assembly is deadlocked. Bhelen needs your support for the throne."
"A king won't defeat a blight," Branka snapped. "We've had forty generations of kings and lost everything. I don't care if the Assembly puts a drunken monkey on the throne. Because our Great protector, our great invention, the thing that made our army the envy of the world is lost to the very darkspawn it should be fighting! The Anvil of the Void! The means by which the ancients forged their army of golems and held off the first archdemon ever to rise. It's here! So close, I can taste it!"
"But of course there's a catch..." Garik muttered.
"The Anvil lies on the other side of a gauntlet of traps designed by Caridin himself," Branka continued as if the rogue hadn't spoken. "My people and I have given body and soul to unlock its secrets."
"Emphasis on 'and soul' by the looks of things..." Xolana muttered.
"Why can these things never be simple?" Tristan griped.
"This is what's important, this has lasting meaning!" Branka ranted. "If I succeed the Dwarven people benefit! Kings, politics, all of this is transitory. I've given up everything and would sacrifice anything to get the Anvil of the Void!"
"You're obsessed!" Tira snapped. "This must be why Caridin locked the Anvil away!"
"I tire of these banalities," Morrigan sneered. "Can't we just get on with it and fight our way through this crazed woman already?"
"Even if we wanted to..." Conrí growled. "She has the high ground."
"I will not give up," Branka spat. "His legacy lies just on the other side. There is only one way out, Wardens. Through Cardin's traps and out through the Anvil of the Void."
"What has this place done to you?!" Oghren snarled. "I remember marrying a girl you could speak to for one minute and see her brilliance!"
"I am your Paragon," Branka sneered, walking away.
Oghren sighed and forced a chuckle. "Good ol' Branka. She's a bit... abrasive, isn't she? Guess I forgot about that part of her screeching in my ear every sodding day. Oh, well. We'll get her the Anvil, then she'll come home and everything will be better..."
Conrí turned his eyes warily to the red headed berserker. "Who are you trying to convince? Us... or yourself?"
"Uh, Oghren…" Xolana was silenced quickly by the looks Conrí and Leliana threw her. "...let's just get through to the Anvil."
"Shale, we're gonna need your help here," Conrí said gruffly.
"Very well," the golem nodded. "I am very interested to see what lies beyond, myself. I will do as it asks."
The traps were clever; worthy of the mind of a paragon, but Serena and Garik helped the others navigate the maze.
Serena strode next to Shale as the team entered the main chamber. "The Lyrium veins in here are so thick, it's almost like the temple behind Haven," Serena commented.
"Sodding hell!" Garik exclaimed as he examined the several inert golems lining the hall. "I think — yes, this symbol! This is what's left of the Legion of Steel!"
Serena glanced at the confused looks on many of her companions' faces and explained quickly. "In the second year of the reign of Queen Getha, one hundred and twenty six golems, the entire Legion of Steel, were sent to recover the Paragon Caridin. None returned," she frowned. "Of 126 golems, only 12 remain? Hm..."
"That sounds like it doesn't bode well," Xolana muttered.
Garik turned to the largest golem, this one black with a skull-like helm for a face. "My name is Caridin," the golem spoke, it's booming voice echoing in its helm. "Once, longer ago than I care to think, I was a Paragon to the dwarves of Orzammar."
Xolana glanced uneasily between Shale and Caridin. "Shale, tell me this rings a bell. Please."
"And that we're not about to be attacked by those things," Tristan added.
Shale however was gob smacked and barely heard the pair of mages. "Caridin? The Paragon Smith? Alive?!"
"Ah, there is a voice I recognize," a smile seemed to enter Caridin's voice. "Shayle of the house of Cadash. Step forward."
"We are in no danger at the moment, little mages," Shale assured the nervous pair.
"I distinctly heard Shale say 'at the moment,'" Xolana squeaked. "I don't like this."
"You know my name Caridin," Shale rumbled. "Was it you who forged me? Was it you who gave me my name?"
"Then... you do not remember?" Caridin sighed. "It has been so long. I made you into the Golem you are now, Shayle, but before that, you were a dwarf, just as I was. The finest warrior to serve king Valtor and the only woman to volunteer."
"Woman?" Leliana cocked her head. "Oh my. That explains the stones."
"Explains a lot of things, actually," Conrí nodded.
"The only... woman?! A dwarf?!" Shayle stared.
"I laid you on the Anvil of the Void," Caridin intoned. "Here in this very room and put you into the form you now possess."
"The Anvil of the Void..." Shayle rumbled. "That is what we seek."
"If you seek the Anvil, you must care about my story, or be doomed to repeat it," Caridin warned.
"So you want something..." Garik sighed. "Everyone does."
"I do," Caridin nodded. "I lived to insure the Anvil was never used again. Now it never shall be. I made many things in my time, but I rose to Paragon because of a single invention. The Anvil of the Void. It allowed me to make a man of steel or stone, as flexible and clever as any soldier. As an army, they were invincible... But I told no one the cost..."
"The... cost?" Serena grimaced.
Cardin nodded wearily. "No mere smith, however skilled, has the power to create life. To make my creations live, I had to take their lives from elsewhere..." Xolana, Wynne and Tristan all went deathly pale. "The darkspawn were pressing in. Originally, I only took volunteers, like Shayle, the bravest souls who were willing to trade their very lives for the chance to defend their home land. But King Valtor became greedy. He began to force men; casteless and criminals... his political enemies... all of them were given to the Anvil. It took feeling the hammers blow myself to realize the height of my crimes... I managed to subdue the few members of the legion sent to find me. We have been entombed here ever since. I have sought a way to destroy the Anvil. Alas, I cannot do it myself. No golem can touch the Anvil."
"This thing must be destroyed at once, you can't let it continue to exist!" said Wynne without hesitation.
"As useful as golems may be, I don't like the sound of this thing either, Conrí," Xolana agreed.
"This isn't my choice to make," Conrí sighed, looking to Serena, Garik and Oghren. Serena swallowed hard.
"No!" Branka bayed, sprinting into the chamber. "The Anvil is mine! No one will take it from me!"
"Did someone order a helping of crazy?" Garik growled, his hands itching at the daggers in his belt. "That sure as nugdung isn't gonna help us make this choice!"
"Shayle, please," Caridin begged. "You fought to destroy the Anvil once. Do not allow it to fall into unthinking hands again!"
"You speak of things I do not remember! You say we fought… Did you use our control rods to compel us to do so?" Shayle demanded angrily.
"I destroyed the rods," Caridin snapped. "Maybe my apprentices learnt enough to replace the rods — I don't know — but if so, then all they would need is the Anvil to make all the slaves they require!"
"Why are you even listening?" Branka sneered. "We had an agreement, Warden! I'm the one you have tried to find, after all… not him! Don't listen to that old fool. He's been trapped down here for a thousand years, stewing in his own madness!"
"I don't recall an agreement and, frankly, you are quite mad yourself," Xolana growled. "I think we're choosing between the lesser of two evils here."
Branka was almost foaming at the mouth by this point. "Help me to claim the Anvil and you'll have an army like none ever seen before!"
Serena, speaking for the first time since Cardin's speech, interjected. "Xolana is right. We never agreed to such a thing. This creation must be destroyed."
"So it fights along with Caridin? Good, this seems right," Shale nodded.
"Thank you, my friend. Your compassion shames me," Caridin sighed.
"Branka, you mad bleeding nugtail!" Oghren barked. "Does this thing mean so much to you, you can't even see what you've lost to get it? "
"Look around you, Oghren!" Branka wailed. "Is this what our empire should look like? A crumbling tunnel, overflowing with darkspawn spume? The Anvil will let us take back our glory, and you will not take it from me!"
"Branka, don't throw your life away for this!" Oghren pleaded.
"Oghren, she's obsessed beyond reason," Serena sighed. "I fear there is only one way this can end..."
"Just give her the blasted thing!" Oghren growled, his eyes wild and terrified. "She's confused; maybe once she calms down, we can talk some sense into her..."
Serena shook her head. "I'm truly sorry, Oghren… but that is a risk I am not willing to take."
"Oghren, I'm sorry but you have to see there is no other way. The Branka you once knew is gone," Xolana said softly.
"Bah," Branka scoffed. "You are not the only master-smith here, Caridin!" she drew a thin iron rod from her belt and pressed her finger to a small switch at its base. "Golems, obey me! Attack!" Almost instantly, the formation of golems sprang to life, opening and closing their fists and advancing.
Caridin seemed to freeze up, unable to move. "A control rod!" he gasped. "My friends, you must help me! I cannot stop her alone!"
"These things never do end peacefully, do they?" Xolana muttered, leaping into the fray.
"We should crush the mad wife quickly," Shayle barked.
"Sounds good to me," Conrí retorted glibly, his mouth quirking into a grin of bravado even as his eyes warily looked for a way to defeat the enclosing circle of stone behemoths. The rest of the party looked similarly apprehensive, and all the while, the mad dwarf ranted and raved at the top of her voice, a mixture of threats, curses and profanities.
"Kill them all, you stone buffoons! No, perhaps I will take you meddling fools alive and place you on the Anvil, make you slave for me for all eternity, punish you for trying to deny me my right! And as for you, Caridin, your apprentices might have been too dull-witted to fashion a proper control rod, but I am most assuredly not so stupid!"
Branka's ranting threats turned into a pain-stricken wail as an arrow from the Bard's bow slammed into her wrist, the shaft piercing through, the arrowhead protruding out of the other side of her arm, dripping blood. The control rod fell from limp fingers and the golems became inert once more. Shayle raced across the room to the stricken dwarf as the mad woman scrabbled on all fours, trying to recover the control rod. Branka's left hand closed around the control rod and she let out a noise of triumph, getting to her feet and about to press the switch, only to notice the shadow that had fallen over her. She looked up only to see Shayle looming over her.
Quick as an adder, the golem's right fist seized Branka by the throat, lifting her clean off the ground, while Shayle's left hand seized Branka's and squeezed, crushing armor, flesh and bone mercilessly, the dwarf screaming all the while as the control rod again clattered to the floor, first from pain, and then from rage.
"Put me down! Put me down at once, I command it! You golems are servants to the dwarven people, you were made to serve us and you will obey me! Release me this instant!" the mad dwarf screamed at the top of her voice.
"As you wish," Shayle replied and, pulling her arm back, hurled the dwarf with incredible force. Branka's screams continued as the Paragon flew across the room until her head connected with the stone wall at phenomenal speed, before sliding down the wall and crumpling in a broken heap at its base. Oghren gave a yell of shock and raced across to check his mad wife's vitals, stopping when he saw that the upper right portion of her skull had been crushed into a gaping red crater unveiling cerebral matter, and realized that no one could survive such an impact.
"How could you!? How could you do — look at the sodding state of her!" the drunken dwarf raged, his eyes bulging, face nearly as red as his hair. "She was a sodding Paragon!"
"Was the woman not trying to kill the drunken dwarf as well? I was under the impression that saving a squishy mortal's life was appreciated."
None of the others could think of anything to say in response to that, though the drunkard opened and closed his mouth a few times. Once it became clear that he would not manage to formulate a coherent response, he merely contented himself with a sullen mutter: "Keep that walking statue away from me." Shayle however felt justified. The mad dwarf had been just as annoying, and as equally deserving of being squished as Wilhelm.
"Another life lost due to my invention," Caridin sighed. "I wish no mention of that accursed thing had ever made it into history."
"Yeah, you ain't kiddin," Oghren muttered darkly. "Stupid woman… always knew the Anvil would be the death of her!"
"How is it the mad woman was not able to disable me as she did you, Caridin?" Shayle questioned.
"I do not know. Have you been altered, Shayle?" Caridin queried.
"I once had a little pathetic mage of a master," Shayle rumbled. "He did something to me, experimented on me. Then I killed him and it rendered me paralyzed."
"Hmm," Caridin stroked his iron chin. Serena could almost picture the dwarf he once was dragging fingers through a long beard. "Perhaps the mage was bringing forth old memories, and caused you to remember the time you fought at my side. The paralysis always occurred when the master perished. As for your free will… well, you were always a strong woman, Shayle. I am pleased to see you have remained as such."
"Sounds like Shale alright," Tristan agreed.
"But how are we supposed to destroy the anvil now?" Leliana asked, eyeing the massive golden construct.
"It is a powerful creation, one I cannot touch... but the hammer that forged it can still destroy it," Caridin suggested. "Is there any boon I can grant you? A final favor before I am freed from my task?"
"I can think of nothing I want from you, Paragon," Serena shook her head. "Out of all of us, Oghren has lost the most; if anyone has a right to ask for a boon of you, it is he."
"I don't suppose you could maybe… bring Branka back?" Oghren asked, a flicker of hope in his bloodshot eyes. "Make her a golem like you?"
But Caridin shook his head. "I would not do such a thing to her, even if I could."
Oghren sighed. "Somehow I didn't think so. Then I don't want anything that could remind me of this; best it's just done," his eyes flickered again as a thought struck him. "There is, however, the matter of the election; I mean we need a Paragon's support to deal with the Assembly."
Caridin nodded. "For the aid you have given me, I will place hammer to steel one last time, to forge you a crown for the king of your choice. Wait here, stranger, it won't take long."
As Caridin moved off to work, Garik reached down, plucking the control rod Branka had dropped from the stone floor. "Hm…"
"If you even think about keeping that control rod, I will crush your skull right now!" Shayle barked.
"They were created to fight darkspawn, Shayle," Garik said evenly. "It's pointless to leave them down here to gather dust when they could be popping genlock skulls. I agree no more should be created, but the damage these few could wreak..."
"Could... whatever was done to you, Shayle, be repeated to the golems that still exist?" Xolana asked. "So that they can be offered a choice of fighting with us?"
"I suppose... it is possible..." Shayle contemplated.
"The dwarf speaks truly, Shayle," Caridin rumbled as he picked up his hammer. "It does seem pointless to leave them here when the mission of your companions requires all the assistance it can obtain. This last vestige of the Legion of Steel are yours, rogue, on one condition."
"Name it," Garik said immediately.
"When the Blight is done, you will shatter the control rod, so they may have the opportunity to regain themselves," Caridin said. "If not, return them to the Stone, so that they may rest as the heroes of the Dwarven people they are."
Garik nodded. "I agree."
"Are you ok with that, Shayle?" Xolana piped up. "It seems reasonable to me."
"...Yes, the more I think on it, the more I like the idea," Shayle nodded. "Very well, the loud Dwarf shall not have his head crushed."
"Yay?" Garik gulped.
"Hurrah, we all love each other again," Tristan grumbled. "Now what of the Anvil."
Caridin rejoined them after a while with the crown he'd promised. "There, it is done. Give it to whom you will. I do not care to know their names or anything else of them. I have already lived far beyond my time: I have no place here. Now it is time to fulfill your end of the bargain, Serena Aeducan."
Serena nodded and grabbed the large hammer Caridin used to forge the crown. With a slightly regretful sigh, she reared back and struck the Anvil with all her strength, everyone watching in awe as the massive construct crumbled.
"It is finished," Caridin sighed, a weight seemingly lifting from his old soul.
"But, where will you go?" Shayle glanced over to where Caridin was staring. A cliff overlooking a river of magma. "Surely you don't mean to-?"
"I do," Caridin nodded. "I lived to ensure the Anvil of the Void would never be used again. And now, it never shall. We all must have an end, Shayle. If the Ancestors will it, let yours be of your own choosing," he proclaimed, setting a comradely hand on Shayle's stony shoulder. "As for you, Serena Aeducan… you have my eternal thanks. Atrast nal tunsha… may you always find your way in the dark."
With that Caridin leaned forward and dropped the long way into the molten river. Everyone was silent for a long moment in remembrance of the paragon.
The silence was broken by a surly Oghren. "Well, that pretty much beat the sod out of how I imagined it," Oghren grumbled to Serena. "Shall we start heading back? If we're lucky, hopefully it won't take us more than a week."
"Yes, let's go while a king is still of use to us," Serena agreed.
Oghren snorted. "Bah. Those deshyrs have been trying to destroy Orzammar for years. They haven't managed it yet."
After stopping briefly at a stone memorial backed by an unused Golem shell and copying the names of all those who volunteered to go through the process, the tired group headed back to the city.
They wrapped the amazing crown in a cloth before they entered Orzammar. They had washed and polished their armor after their last sleep, and marched in looking nearly respectable. Without delay they presented themselves at the Chamber of the Assembly, which was in complete chaos, as threats and insults echoed from the ancient walls.
Steward Bandelor gave Serena a look of desperate hope, when she appeared at the door of the Chamber. He proclaimed, "The Grey Warden has returned!" and the pandemonium hushed somewhat, while Serena strode to the center of the room. Oghren flanked her on one side, and Alistair, holding the hidden crown, on the other.
Serena looked at the bickering nobles without fear and without respect. These were her people, yet they'd thrown her away with no hesitation and many refused to see how far their glorious empire had fallen. Serena had no such qualms. It really was a wonder that Orzammar had survived at all, with leaders like this. Harrowmont and Bhelen stood above the fray, but were certainly part of it.
"Well, Warden? Have you news for us?" demanded the Steward.
"I bring a crown forged by Paragon Caridin on the Anvil of the Void," Serena declared, as she flicked away the coarse linen. A gasp of wonder rose as Alistair lifted it up for their inspection.
Oghren took up the tale. He was even sober. "Caridin was trapped in the body of a golem. This Warden granted him the mercy he sought, and in exchange he forged a crown for Orzammar's next king, chosen by the Ancestors themselves!"
Serena had not quite believed that such a claim would be credited for an instant by anyone with a full set of wits, but Oghren had known his own people best and unlike Serena and Garik, had not been exiled. Only Harrowmont expressed doubt. "I would like to believe Oghren's tale, but everyone knows that the Grey Warden is Bhelen's hireling."
The words were deeply offensive, but Serena only gave the elderly man a burning look. The old man had the decency to look abashed, and waited for the Steward to examine the crown himself. He said, deeply impressed, "Silence! This crown is of Paragon make and bears the seal of House Ortan. Tell us, Warden, who did Caridin choose?"
She smiled coldly, and made them wait, glancing over the room, watching the nobles eye each other, as they hoped to hear something to their advantage. From his place across the room, Bhelen stared at her with blazing expectation. She was not feeling particularly friendly to him at the moment, and so answered in a way calculated to make clear to him exactly how much he owed her. "Caridin left the choice entirely to me."
An uproar. Harrowmont's supporters shook their staffs of office at her, and their leader shouted, "That is preposterous! Why would a Paragon leave the choice to a kin slayer?!"
"Because I was there, and you were not, my lords! I delivered him from his penance, and his gratitude was mine!"
Bandelor called the Assembly to order. "We have argued in these chambers too long. The will of the Paragon is that the Grey Warden shall decide. Tell us, Warden, who shall be King?"
"I grant the crown to Bhelen, son of Endrin."
Bhelen stamped triumphantly, and roared, "At last! This farce is ended and I can take my place on my father's throne!" He sneered at Harrowmont, "Do you accept this?"
Harrowmont sank to one knee. "I cannot defy a Paragon. Take your throne, King Bhelen."
Bhelen stepped forward, victorious, and Bandelor set the crown on his head, saying, "Let the memories find you worthy, first among the lords of the Houses, the King of Orzammar."
Bhelen being Bhelen, Serena was not surprised that his first act of office was to call for Harrowmont's execution. There were quite a few executions that day, and Serena watched them impassively, Conrí scowling by her side. Alistair in particular was distressed by the idea that he had helped unleash a tyrant, but even he could not find fault with the honors and respect being heaped on the Wardens and their companions. Serena was even welcomed back into her family's house with full honors.
"I remember, I remember," Alistair muttered to Serena at the inevitable celebratory banquet. "Duncan always said we had to do whatever was necessary, but I'd rather be fighting darkspawn than playing politics!"
"You and me both," Serena agreed, popping a slice of roast boar into her mouth.
Later that night, Leliana and Xolana noticed Conrí had slipped out at some point. Worried about some of Harrowmont's lingering supporters, they walked around the Diamond Quarter before learning from a guardsman that he'd headed to the Commons. From there, the bartender at Tapsters said he'd stopped by for a pint before leaving again, saying he was headed to the gates if someone needed him.
"Aye, he's out there," the gate guard nodded when questioned. "Said something about needing a breath of fresh air," the dwarf shook his head. "Surfacers."
The women smiled thinly. It was something neither side would ever understand. Surfacers would never comprehend why dwarves felt the need to have the crushing weight of a mountain overhead and the dwarves of Orzammar would never get why the Cloud heads needed that blighted abyss all around them.
Xolana and Leliana went through the doors into the shocking cold. Winter had truly come to the Frostbacks. Clutching their new Red Lion fur cloaks around them, they spotted Conrí quickly, sitting on the ledge at the top of the stairs leading to Orzammar. Conrí looked back as the door clanked shut again, smiling warmly as he spotted who had followed him.
"I'm not surprised someone came looking," he said with a soft chuckle.
"Harrowmont, even in death, has a lot of allies," Leliana reasoned. "And you didn't take your armor."
Conrí shrugged and turned his attention back to the sky. "You never realize how much you take the night sky for granted until you spend months with a mountain over your head."
"I know what you mean," Leliana agreed, sitting next to Conrí on his right as Xolana took his left. "But that is not the only reason you're out here, is it?"
Conrí shrugged again. "It's part of the reason. The other… I don't know, honestly. Something about tonight just seems… special." The three sat in comfortable silence for a little while before Conrí spotted something coming up from the south. He smiled and said softly, "Look." He pointed to what looked like odd rays of light drawing closer.
Xolana and Leliana's eyes widened in awe as the lights swam over head. Blues, greens, oranges and reds danced through sky. Xolana remembered reading about these in the tower, though had never seen one through the scattered windows. "An aurora…"
Conrí nodded. "The Avvar and the Ash Warriors call it Sky-Fire. It's said that those who witness it are blessed by the Lady of the Skies. A good omen."
Xolana smiled. "You never struck me as the superstitious type, Conrí."
Conrí chuckled. "I'm not, but… well, it never hurts to hope for a little luck, eh?"
Xolana nodded, wrapping her arms around one of Conrí's and leaning into him. Conrí smiled and wrapped an arm around Leliana, letting her snuggle into his side as well. The trio watched the dazzling lightshow long into the night, departing for bed only when the last rays faded from sight.
AN: Well, there's Chapter 35 done. I know the last scene is a bit cheesy, but after the broodmother, i think it's deserved. Chapter 36 will be up fairly soon since i already have about 7000 words done. It really depends on my amazing beta's schedule. Well, i hope you enjoyed it and keep an eye out for 36 within the next few weeks. Thanks again for reading. :) ~Sin