Victoria's Nightmare
She towered above us, a quivering Christmas tree built entirely of breasts. It was like some nightmarish creature from a Woody Allen movie. It was an obscene mockery of a Victoria's Secret runway show: a grotesque celebration of womanhood, sans lingerie. I was certain the breastmas tree was going to spew milk at us, so I wasn't at all prepared for the poison shooting from her mouth, or the tentacles that emerged from the ground.
The ground. That's an interesting label for what we stood on. It was more like a pestilential mucus membrane. It was slick, red and swollen like infected gums. It sported polyps and lesions, like a diseased colon. Large tumors pulsated with an eerie light, which was unfortunate; I would have preferred pitch dark to the sights before me.
"What is it?" I murmured.
"A broodmother," Riordan said, standing as riveted to the ground as I was.
The only welcome vision in all this was the two rocks that emerged out of the tissue covered ground. Those two rocks seemed to give us some separation from the beast and the tentacles.
"Stand on the rocks," I shouted, barely dodging a thin stream of what I suspected was not split-pea soup, "and shoot!" The not-split-pea soup sizzled when it hit the ground, confirming my suspicions.
Most of us had ranged weapons, except Oghren. The rest of us stood on the rocks and shot at her. He chopped at the waving tentacles with his ax. A few darkspawn came into the cavern where we fought her. Laryn? Was this the woman that the nearly incoherent Hespith had been chanting about?
When anything came too close to us on our rock perches we switched to melee weapons. I caught a load of whatever it was the broodmother was spitting on my chest and screamed as it dripped into my cleavage, burning and sticky. I tried to wipe it away with my hands but it burned them too. I got out my water-skin and poured it over myself. It helped.
I saw Oghren get hit full in the face with the poison and he dropped his weapon and screamed in pain. I dashed over to his rock and poured water on his face and hands. Then I dashed back to the rock where I had been fighting with Riordan and Wynne. Others saw what I had been doing with my water-skin and they followed suit.
One of the tentacles picked up Riordan and squeezed him. I cursed it furiously, chopping at it with my daggers. It flung him around like a rag doll and it seemed hopeless that I'd damage it enough to get him free. I heard his moan of pain as the tentacle squeezed him. I got in only one really good stab and the tentacle bashed him against the rock. I was afraid it was going to kill him, so I cut myself on each forearm and the blood seeped out of the cuts and down my blades.
Wynne was busy healing and she didn't see what I had done. The blood magic made my blades sizzle as they cut deeply into the tentacle. It dropped Riordan and writhed in agony. I caught the tentacle with my hand, somehow sinking my fingers into its slippery, thick skin and I began to saw at it. I cut it nearly three-fourths of the way through it before it retreated into the mucus membrane floor. I had to let go or risk being pulled into the floor.
Wynne was kneeling beside Riordan healing him. He didn't move for a moment, then he sat up and bounced to his feet looking fit.
"Welcome back." I grinned grimly. "Fancy riding, buckaroo! I think that could be a new rodeo event."
He looked at my blades and the seeping wound on my forearms. "That work?"
"Like a hot knife through buh..." I started to say, but the tentacles burst through the floor again and one wrapped around my ankle and pulled me up off the rock. "Oh fuck!" I screamed. Then I thanked Elissa Cousland for having a strong core. I pulled my torso up like a sit-up and began to saw on the end of the tentacle holding my ankle. The blood magic was still working and my dagger sawed easily. The tentacle was whipping me around and I could barely hang on; I was also about to lose the deep stalker stew I'd eaten for lunch. I was able to saw through the tentacle and I flew across the chamber and landed with a squishy plop in the mucus membrane floor. My bare thighs were coated with some sort of ooze. Then I had a horrible epiphany. The thing rising out of the floor was all breasts and a pair of tiny arms and a head. What if this mucus membrane stuff were her... urgh... genitals and this slime coating my thighs... do not finish that thought!
When the broodmother finally died we all looked at each other with our own personal trauma reflected in our eyes. This was what the darkspawn did to females they captured. They turned them into breeding machines. "Just kill me, if it looks hopeless." The other women in my party all nodded.
Hespith walked along a precipice above the brood mother and finished her chant. "That's why they hate us..." she said. She drew another breath. "That's why they take..." She stopped, a bolt sprouted out of her chest.
I saw Alistair lowering his crossbow. "I couldn't let that happen to her."
I nodded. "Of course not." I walked over to him and squeezed his arm. There was something different about Alistair. He looked like he had just matured about ten years in the last few minutes. Riordan nodded to him. A subtle guy gesture that said, 'You did right'.
We filed out of the chamber and resumed our long march to the Anvil of the Void.
~o~o~o~
Then we met Branka. She had only two breasts, and for that I was grateful. She and Oghren weren't delighted to be reunited. In fact, she pretty much trapped us and forced us to run a gauntlet of Caridin's devising that she couldn't figure out.
I leaned over to whisper to Oghren, "I am so not inviting you and your wife over for dinner if we survive this."
He shrugged at me. "She's madder than a bagful of wet nugs."
"Oh fine, I'll invite you, but not her."
We figured our way out of the traps and puzzles. It was annoying and tedious and ended in painful bruises. Usually it started with me dashing into a room and waving my arms around while everyone else waited behind a door. Something would follow me back to where everyone else waited and we would pound it to pieces.
Finally we came upon a room with an immense metal golem who introduced himself as the paragon Caridin. He explained that he wanted to destroy the anvil because it was a pretty awful thing. It trapped the essence of a dwarf in a construct, a golem. I gathered that it was rather unpleasant, especially since your free will was taken from you and you were subject to the whims of whoever possessed your control rod.
"Funny," Zevran murmured, "it works that way for me too."
I smiled mischievously at Zevran and suppressed a guffaw. This was a serious moment and I had to be serious.
Then Branka, taking advantage of our solving the puzzles and disarming various traps, showed up. She presented her counter-argument to destroying the anvil. Rather, she screeched her counter-argument at us.
I looked at my brothers. "We need an aside," I said to Branka and Caridin. I pulled Riordan and Alistair aside. "Okay, let's see if we can come to some sort of consensus on this. Danny? What are your thoughts?"
He mused a moment. "Well, the golems would be amazing to have for the Blight, but I couldn't condone trapping someone inside one of them for eternity."
I turned to Alistair. "Oh definitely Caridin. Branka is vicious and insane."
I smiled. "Good. I feel that way too. Will Oghren be a problem?"
Riordan shrugged. "Who knows where his loyalties lie now. It seemed there was little love lost between the pair."
"I think we can resolve this without further conflict," I said. I think those words qualified me for a plaque in the "Didn't Turn Out That Way" Hall of Fame.
We broke and returned to the golems and Branka.
"I think we've decided how to resolve this unfortunate conflict," I said, trying to put a positive spin on some bad news. I realized I had become the spokesperson for our little party. It must have been Elissa's golden pipes and my choice of soothing, happy words. "Branka, I am sorry, but we believe it is inhumane, or indwarvane, to create new golems. We agree with Caridin, the anvil must be destroyed. However, we'd be happy to escort you back to Orzammar."
That bit of news did not go over well; my choice of soothing, happy words, delivered in smoothly modulated tones aside. Branka proved she had picked up something from her husband and she knew how to fight. She caught me by surprise, swinging her sword at my middle, nearly disemboweling me, but I did manage to jump out of the way. Alistair charged into her and caught her attention, but some golems joined the fight.
"She's got a control rod!" Caridin bellowed.
I hate golems, as being struck by rocks is highly unpleasant. I was squishy and soft, they were... rock hard. It is not a good combination. Bam! My arm is broken. Whirling blue light. Hooray, it's mended. Bam! Broken again. It was hell on my weapons too. Exactly what can a pair of daggers do to a golem other than carve my initials into it, dulling them in the process? Before my weapons went completely dull I cut my hands again and drew on the blood magic. Then I started having more success. My daggers cut into the rock like it was flesh. Riordan saw my success and cut himself as well.
Oghren did not turn on us as I had feared he might; we were after all, trying to kill his wife. He swore at her and took swings with his big ax. She turned away from Alistair and gave back to Oghren better than he was giving. It was the marital dispute of the century. Alistair kept bashing her head with his shield and she decided he was a worse threat than Oghren.
It was fortunate that Wynne had a plethora of broken limbs to fix rather than seeing two out of three Wardens using blood magic. When the fight ended, with us prevailing however broken and crushed we were, I quickly healed our self-inflicted wounds and Wynne was unaware that we'd offended the Maker and his best girl.
Zevran stared down at Branka's lifeless body and clapped a reassuring hand on Oghren's shoulder. "At least it is cheaper than a divorce," he said reassuringly.
Oghren nodded. "This way I get to keep the liquor cabinet and the china." His eyes were a bit red, but I think they were that way all the time.
Caridin forged a crown for us and told us to give it to whomever we wished. I asked him to inscribe some words on the inside. Don't be an ass. I figured those would be good words for a king to carry around. Caridin actually giggled. It was one of the stranger things I'd ever heard. He inscribed the words in a very tiny, flowery script. Hopefully the king wouldn't see it until we were well away from Orzammar.
He asked us to destroy the Anvil of the Void for him. I wasn't exactly sure how we were supposed to do that. It was a big, hulking piece of metal that we couldn't budge even if we all pushed together.
"Um... how?" My expression must have shown my incredulity.
Caridin picked up a large metal hammer and handed it to me. It was very heavy. "Strike the anvil with this hammer."
"You mean me?" I could barely lift the hammer. I tottered backwards as I hefted it up. "I'm pretty fit, but I rather doubt..."
"Do not doubt!" Caridin said forcefully. "Strike the forge and shatter it with your will." His tone was confident and imperious.
I pulled in a deep breath and took a wide-stance. "I think I can... I think I can..." I murmured. I shifted the hammer, turned my torso and remembered how I had split through pine boards in karate class. You just had to focus your energy on the correct spot and know that you could do it. This would be easier, because I wouldn't have a broken, bloody hand if I messed up. Just a very, very sore, numb tingling arm. I focused myself for a moment and then I struck, yelling a loud kiai.
The hammer hit the anvil and it didn't stop. The anvil shattered around the hammer into a lot of pieces. I stood there for a moment looking in disbelief at the pile of broken anvil. "Oh wow!" was all I could murmur. The crazy thought of I should have worn safety glasses occurred to me. A piece of the anvil could have hit me in the eye.
"Well done, Warden." Caridin gave me a respectful bow then executed a very graceful swan dive into the molten lava river below the top of the cliff where we stood.
I watched to see how big of a splash he would make, but if there was one I couldn't see it. "Be at peace, Caridin." I hoped his essence, soul, or whatever that had been trapped inside the metal construct would be at rest.
I turned to my companions and despite all the rather tragic events I grinned happily. We were leaving the Deep Roads! I'd have hot baths, hot meals and... privacy again. If I never saw another Victoria's nightmare beast, it'd be too soon.
~o~o~o~
"Caridin chose Bhelen!" The lie fell of my lips easily. Caridin couldn't give a rat's ass who the next king was. I pulled the crown out of my bag and held it up for all to see.
The crowd murmured around us to see the very nice crown he had made. I handed it to the seneschal and Bhelen walked solemnly down the steps of the assembly and knelt.
"Let the memories find you worthy, first amidst the lords of the houses, the king of Orzammar" were the simple words spoken by the lord steward as Bhelen was crowned the king.
I swallowed a guffaw as the crown nearly dwarfed, so to speak, Bhelen's head.
Bhelen turned around and addressed Harrowmont. "Do you acknowledge me as king?"
"I... cannot defy a paragon, the throne is yours, King Bhelen." Harrowmont knelt and bowed his head.
"Then as my first act as king, I call for this man's execution. Guards, seize him!" Bhelen shouted, his voice echoing off the walls of the assembly.
I started to take a step forward to protest the brutal move but I felt Riordan clamp his hand around my forearm and he shook his head at me. I could only look on in amazement. How incredibly brutal Bhelen was.
Bhelen promised us immediate support and we agree to meet him in the palace the next day.
~o~o~o~
I stewed the entire way back to the Grey Warden compound and everyone could see I was fuming. As soon as we got inside I turned to Riordan and opened my mouth. "What..."
"Lucy, he probably did that to ensure there wouldn't be uprisings in the future. He dealt harshly with his opponent to send a message about what others can expect. Is it brutal? Yes, but this is how dwarves rule. We can't interfere in that any more than we already have."
"You're right," I acknowledged. "The Prime Directive of the Grey Wardens." Heck, a few short weeks ago I would have murdered Harrowmont myself to resolve this more quickly. We wouldn't get our army of dwarves if Bhelen couldn't hold onto the throne. No one asked about the Prime Directive, for which I was grateful. I was certain Star Trek would sound geeky even in Thedas.
But we were out of the Deep Roads! The dwarves could rot in hell, just so long as we got our treaty fulfilled. I wasted no more energy thinking about how poor Lord Harrowmont was going to be dealt with.
"I call dibbs on the baths!" I yelled. I started to peel off my armor, dropping my pack, my weapons, and other bits behind me, on my mad dash to the bathing room. Riordan followed right behind me and promised the others he wouldn't let me dawdle in there.
We all had a lot of scrubbing to do to get the Deep Roads out of our pores.
~o~o~o~
Notes: Thanks for the reviews! I live for them... seriously. If you haven't, you might want to check out The Lost Chapters. They are very short snippets from this story that burned their way out of my brain and didn't really fit into the main story, or at least, not when I initially wrote them.
My eternal gratitude to Biff McLaughlin who catches much dreckitude in my writing.
