"Everybody up! We're leaving!"

Alistair starts taking down the tent while I ready the camp for our departure. Aedan and Leliana are already awake, saddling the horses, but Theorn, Morrigan, and Talith are still sleeping. I keep yelling at them to get moving, and they eventually do, but Talith has to be helped with some of his armor.

"Darkspawn incursion my ass," I mutter angrily. "Fucking Blight all over again!"

"What is it, Warden?" Theorn asks.

I scatter the coals of the fire with my foot. "You know about Corypheus right? That stupid darkspawn thing that was killing my Wardens after the Blight ended?" When Theorn nods, I laugh bitterly. "He's found an Archdemon. Isn't it great?! I told you the Maker would screw us over!"

"We need to hunt Mythal," Theorn says flatly. "New Archdemon or not."

I freeze, hands clenching and unclenching. The camp has stilled at his words, but I whip around and march up to him. I've kept myself together for years, and now I can't do it any longer. "I am a Grey Warden before anything else! If there's an Archdemon, it's my duty to do something about it as soon as I can! I didn't kill the last one for nothing, and I'm damn well not going to allow another Blight to rip Ferelden to hell again! Corypheus needs to die just as much as Mythal, but he's got an Archdemon and his stupid monster he had the darkspawn dig up for him! He has two dragons! Two! I should've known that issue in the Hinterlands had to be dealt with. I knew he was there, but..." I shake my head and laugh from the insanity of it all. "Flemeth is in on it! She...I saw her with Corypheus! This entire thing was planned!"

"Mythal takes precedence over Corypheus," Theorn insists.

My temper flares tremendously. Hope is screaming in my head, enraged, and I have my own anger to deal with. "How can you say that?! Do you want to see innocent people die? Do you?"

"No, but we'll prevent more deaths hunting Mythal."

"They're working together!" I exclaim furiously. "Corypheus has your friend!"

"Then we will go back for him," Theorn says.

I'm about ready to burst. Between the Orlesians and the Maker, southern Thedas has gone to shit. Kirkwall is another matter altogether, but Orlais just made their intentions clear, and now Corypheus is stirring up the darkspawn. He even managed to organize them enough into a frighteningly fast band of miners. They found an Archdemon in less than five years. In Ferelden. Again.

A hand is on my shoulder. I cringe from the contact, fuming, and whip, shoving the person back before I can stop myself. "We don't have time to waste standing around like this!"

Alistair rubs his arm and my eyes widen. I...I just...

"Calm down, Liss. We can handle this."

I need to hit something. "How?! There's an Archdemon in the Hinterlands!" I don't even stop to wonder how I know that. "We're at war with Orlais!"

"Calm. Down," Alistair repeats. "Get yourself together. We'll head to Redcliffe and go from there, as planned, and find Flemeth and Corypheus. Then we'll go from there, all right? Don't worry about anything else but getting to Redcliffe."

"I don't think you understand just exactly how screwed we are."

Alistair grabs both of my shoulders and leans close. "Calm," he says forcefully. I squeeze my eyes shut, breathing through my nose.

"Calm."

"Yes. Calm down."

I feel my heart racing, pounding in my chest so hard that it hurts. My head throbs from the sound of Hope screaming. My breathing is rough from talking so quickly and so furiously.

"Better?" Alistair asks.

I nod once, eyes still closed. "Better." I look up at him and force a smile, mouthing, "Thank you." He just nods.

"Ooookay, now that that's over with, we can get a move on," Aedan says. "If Elissa's right, we'll need to get to the Hinterlands and alert the Wardens there."

"Of course I'm right. I'm always right when I want to be wrong and vice versa." I push Alistair's hands away and trudge over to my horse, pulling myself up into the saddle. The others quickly follow suit, barely looking in my direction. I suppose having a breakdown isn't a popular thing. "On foot, it's a week to Redcliffe. If we push the horses, we should be able to shorten it to a few days."

"Then we push the horses," Aedan says. "We'll stop at the outpost first before going to Redcliffe."

We should be approaching the Warden outpost by now. I know we are, but there's nothing. No scouts or lookouts, no markers. Aedan and Alistair are in front of our group, riding slowly and keeping their eyes out for anything suspicious. Talith is directly behind them, followed by Morrigan and Theorn, and then Leliana and I.

"I gather this isn't normal?" Leliana whispers.

"Ah, no."

"I don't get it," Aedan says. "We should have seen someone by now."

"Unless they are all dead," Morrigan replies.

"How cheery," Leliana mutters.

"Everybody dismount," I say. "Set the horses loose."

Alistair looks back at me, brows furrowed. "Liss, are you sure?" I nod and pull the animal to a stop. I throw my leg over the side and drop to the ground. I take the essentials off the saddle, things like my quiver and my pack, and turn him around. I set him off.

"Yeah. We go on foot from here."

After some rustling around and muttered curses, we're all standing around. The others are looking at me expectantly, so I point at Theorn and Leliana, the only two who may be as quiet as I am, and beckon them after me. Morrigan is as quiet as me, but I don't want her fighting with Leliana. So we lead the way forward through the brush, moving lightly. The other four follow rather loudly, but we're far enough ahead that we'll be able to catch anyone off guard if they go back for them.

When I smell smoke, I stand. The two with me snap things like to get down or hide, but I walk through the forest as obviously as I can. I make noise, I stop and look around, anything and everything to be noticed. Still, nothing. As I come to the clearing where the Wardens should be, the wind gusts in my direction, and fills my nose with the stench of rotting flesh and the distinctive stink of darkspawn bodies.

There's nothing left. Nothing but ash and burned bodies.

I walk only a few feet before falling to my knees. All of the Wardens...dead. Dead and burned. Fifty some lives, gone in an instant. I let out a frustrated yell before climbing to my feet. Behind me, I hear my companions rush into the clearing, thinking something has happened. Instead, they find me standing in the middle of an ash ring. I'm staring at a pile of bodies, all humans and elves and dwarves, burned so badly that they're unrecognizable. The buildings have been reduced to dirt, weapons lay singed and broken everywhere. I look down, eyes squeezed shut, fists clenched, to keep Hope from turning into that monster again. Once I feel I've staved it off, I open my eyes to a helmet by my foot. A Warden helmet, one with soot smeared across the top and a scorch mark across the front. I bend down to pick it up, staring into the blankness.

"We're not letting this happen again," I say softly. "We're not losing all of our Wardens to the Blight."

"We're not going to let this become a Blight," Aedan says.

I snort and turn back to them, gathered as they are in a semicircle. "There's an Archdemon. It already is a Blight." I run my thumb over the visor. "Corypheus wants Thedas to burn. He's made it clear that he'll do anything to achieve that goal. He's taken Hope from me once, he's killed my Wardens, and now he's massed the darkspawn together so easily that they've already found an Archdemon. All of you know that a Warden has to die to end the Blight."

"And we're back to this problem," Aedan says.

"We can't let him unleash the dragon on Ferelden. We have to kill it before it breaches the surface." I swallow and force myself to keep talking. "I was ready to do it once, and I'll do it again. When we find them, and mark my words, we will, I'll kill the dragon."

"Brave words," Talith says. "Let us hope it doesn't come to that."

I look down at the helmet in my hands again. "Let's hope that the dragon we heard was his other one. Let's hope that whatever they found is still asleep."

I wish it were true.

"We're going to Redcliffe," I say resolutely. "We're warning Eamon of the Orlesians, and to keep an eye out for darkspawn. Then we're not leaving until we've found shitface and his damn dragons."

I turn and walk over to the first Warden sword I see. I plant it in the ground, set the helmet on top, and march my way back out to the road without another word.