"In a few hours, she said," Alistair teases.

"We'll be fine, she said," Leliana adds.

"We can sense the darkspawn, she said," Carver supplies.

I give a mock laugh, rolling my eyes. "When was the last time I was right? It's your own stupid faults for believing me. So you know what? Shove it."

Alistair and Leliana laugh, but Carver, being his usual broody self, just grunts. I left Aedan and Nathaniel back at our camp from earlier and took these three with me to continue on through the tunnels. Now we're trapped in a large cavern with no way out, blocked by darkspawn on all sides.

"This is why Aedan should be the leader," Alistair quips.

"Yeah, yeah, keep them coming," I retort. "I've heard them all."

"You suck at leading because you're an idiot?" Alistair tries.

"Haha, so very funny." He flashes me a large grin before charging the darkspawn waiting for us. Carver follows him into the fray, leaving me with Leliana, who still looks mildly pissed off about being dragged into the Deep Roads again. "Remind me why we're always stuck together?"

"You make it sound like a punishment," Leliana says dryly, whipping off an arrow.

"Well...with that accent and everything..."

"If I wasn't shooting darkspawn, I'd shoot you."

"Aww, you always know just what to say!" She glowers through her annoyed amusement and I reach for my sword. "I can see why all the ladies and gents swoon for you!"

Leliana groans. "Some days, Elissa...some days..."

"Some days you wonder where you'd be without me?" I finish, shooting her a grin before leaping towards the nearest beast. I drive my sword through its chest and roll beneath a curved black weapon, coming up behind the hurlock wielding it.

"I'd probably not be in this forsaken hellhole for the third time."

"But then you'd be bored!" I retort happily. I spring to my feet and kick a hurlock back before spinning around and decapitating a genlock. The darkspawn on this side of the Waking Sea...they're freakish. They're the stuff from nightmares, things you wouldn't want to even think of. They're smarter and sturdier, and more willing to get themselves killed by launching at someone in hordes of five or more. Leliana's arrows whip past my face in attempts to keep most of them back, and she succeeds, partially, until she runs out. By then, I've gotten several down and incapacitated, or killed, and I'm needed with the others more than with her.

On my left, I see an emissary, staff and all, hand glowing as the energy from its spell recedes, and I reach back for an arrow. I throw the shaft at an angle as I run, not bothering to stop and check that it's really dead. I probably should have, considering I can hear the boom of the lightning bolt it launches, and feel it crackle past my head, but I ignore it and throw myself into the newest crowd of darkspawn. I get lost in a wave of stomach-churning stink and black blood, doing my level best to keep myself covered by the few remaining hurlocks. I pick and choose which ones to actually engage, using the others as shields from the emissary's line of sight, when a very familiar silver sword nearly pierces my armor as I whip to face the hurlock it's protruding from.

"I thought I told you to stay back with Nate!"

Aedan grimaces as he kicks the hurlock off his blade. "Well, I was chasing that emissary. We were attacked, and when I told Nate to kill it, the thing bolted. I was doing the responsible thing."

I scoff, turning to resume killing the last of the darkspawn. Alistair and Carver are having an easy time of it, so I stop in my tracks and turn back to Aedan. His brown hair is tousled and messy, and his pupils are dilated.

"I suppose you did the right thing," I admit, tossing my sword to the floor. It fades in flakes of gold dust like it always has.

"Did you send Leliana somewhere?" Aedan asks, looking past me. "I don't see her."

"No," I say, turning to look where I last saw her. Instead, I see Alistair and Carver in her place, standing around...someone.

"Liss!" Alistair shouts.


Hawke leads her party through the winding tunnels, wincing at the light. Her head is throbbing from all the arguing between Kirkwall's Guard-Captain and the Grey Warden they found a few hundred feet back in the caves. Delilah Howe, a noblewoman from Hightown, asked (begged would be a more accurate description) the Champion of Kirkwall to go into the Deep Roads and find her brother for her. She was starting to get scared after the lack of contact from him, saying about how he and a few other Wardens were planning on tracing Hawke's footsteps. They'd left a week before Delilah finally asked for help, leaving them with a decent headstart on Miranda and her companions.

If Nathaniel hadn't decided to go after his fellows, they would be on their way out of here. but Hawke made a promise to bring Nathaniel out for his sister, so that's what she's going to do. That'll just take longer than she anticipated. She still has to go out to the Coast to find the former Crow that also requested her assistance. One of the former companions of the Hero of Ferelden, he said. She thought she recognized the name. Anders had confirmed that when he said something about the elf earlier.

They fought their way through a small path lined with golems and even more darkspawn before finally coming onto a clear path. Even from several hundred feet away, Hawke can still hear the fighting, and the shouting between the Wardens up ahead. Nathaniel races past without pause, sprinting to the aid of his friends, and leaves Hawke with no choice but to follow. With an annoyed grunt, she leads them after the archer, reaching for her staff after leaping down a small staircase. Her companions draw their own weapons before going after the darkspawn in the hollowed out cavern. Far in the back, near another staircase leading up towards the thaig she had cleared out years ago, there's an ogre marching towards the Wardens.

"Fantastic," she grumbles. "My headache is only going to get worse."

"Things like that will happen," Anders says, allowing a small joke to slip through his recently stony personality. Miranda smiles in return, but the former Warden is already preparing a spell to throw into the fray.


I wipe my hands off on my pants as I duck beneath a sword. As I straighten, I grab the hurlock's breastplate. I smash its face off my knee, do a quick check that Leliana's safe, and extend a hand for my sword once I'm satisfied that she can handle the darkspawn coming for her. The men are spaced out in a line, pushing the darkspawn away, when I hear grunts and shrieks coming from my left, back the way we came. Just as I start in that direction to round the bend, the floor begins to shake.

"Dammit," I mutter.

"Ogre!" Alistair shouts.

Change of plans.

I look back to the small horde of darkspawn and past it to the horned beast coming from a staircase. It's just as twisted and backwards as the rest of the Free Marches' darkspawn. Black drool drips from its jaws, its grey skin is covered in white scars, and its eyes...there is no color, none whatsoever, and no pupils. They remind me of Aedan's eyes when he first drank the blood during our Joining, or Daveth's...or Ser Jory's...

Skirting the main part of the fighting, I pace around to the back near the darkspawn scrambling forward to throw themselves at the others. The ogre has several guards, all hurlocks, and is prepared for a rock-throwing contest. It already has a chunk of stone clutched in its fist. The boulder is as wide as I am tall and probably weighs five times as much. I can't let it get the chance to use that.

As I start forward, an arrow with black fletching smacks it in the center of the chest. My eyes narrow; Leliana's arrows have white feathers-

One of hers follows in quick succession. It hits the ogre in the neck, causing it to rear back and roar in pain. The darkspawn turn to look, literally stopping in the middle of the fighting with my friends, and since I'm the only one over here, their eyes hone in on me. Now I'm their only target, and you know what, that's not funny.

The ogre recovers rather quickly, and just as the hurlocks begin to swarm me, the beast launches its rock in my direction. A curse falls from my mouth and I roll closer to the darkspawn. It's my only option, or else I'd put myself dangerously close to a thirty foot drop into a lyrium spike. If I didn't want to worry about who would come out, I would've gone the other direction and prayed Hope would be the one to surface instead of the demon.

I leap to my feet easily, balancing on the balls of my feet, and instead of slipping into a defensive crouch, I ready a lightning bolt, one intended to jump between any target within five feet of the victim. I pour as much energy into the spell as I can, hoping to take down most, if not all, of the darkspawn on this side of the cavern so we can split to deal with the ogre and the smaller pack in the front.

Allowing the groaning beasts the opportunity to get within range, I flick my wrist in a sweeping motion. The energy crackles from my fingertips, draining enough of my mana to make me feel lightheaded, and flies into the closest hurlock possible. The ground lurches beneath me and I double over, forgetting to make sure the darkspawn fall, or that the ogre isn't focused on me anymore. I feel so drained by the enormity of that spell that my heart races and my head throbs in time with my pulse. My lungs ache from all the exertion of fighting. My air comes in ragged gasps. I'm on the verge of collapsing and passing out.

Just as I fall to my knees, vision swimming, someone's arms wrap around my shoulders to keep me from hitting the floor.

"Lyrium? Healing? What?"

My mouth is dry as I respond, "Both."

Alistair produces both kinds of potions from his pack and gives me the latter first. I down it quickly, savoring the feel of warmth spreading through my skull. It smothers the pain from my headache, but I know it's going to come back in the next few seconds. Lyrium potions will do that to me sometimes, lately. Almost all the time since the demon made itself known.

"Here," Alistair says. He presses a lyrium potion into my hand now, helping me to my feet. I sway slightly, leaning on him for support, and throw my head back to drain the vial of its contents as quickly as possible. Chills run down my spine as my mana comes rushing back to me, followed by strange waves of warmth. That's one thing I never understood. How can I get chills while the surge of energy makes me warmer?

I look past him, suppressing a coughing fit, to see the carnage that spell wrought. That entire wave of darkspawn is dead, many with burn marks on their chests, or with wounds from a sword in their stomachs.

The ogre still stands. It's backing up the swarm of hurlocks that has appeared in the front of the thaig's entrance, swinging meaty fists at anyone in blue or silver. Leliana flips over its arm as it tries to slap her away, but that only serves to anger the beast, and even though it's her fault the monster is furious, it swings at the nearest target, and launches Aedan into a pillar. Carver is right behind Aedan though, and as he turns in his arc, he brings his greatsword over his head and drives the blade into the ogre's wrist, sinking the blade through the flesh to the hilt. The ogre roars in pain and yanks on its arm, pulling Carver from the ground, and tossing him across the chamber towards the statue of a dwarven Paragon. The sword remains buried in the grey arm, but the ogre grabs it and plucks it free like I would do with a splinter, and drops it on the ground.

"Holy Maker," Alistair breathes.

"We can't just stand here!" I exclaim.

I throw Alistair's grip on me off and dash across the chamber. He follows after retrieving his equipment from where he dropped it. By then, I'm halfway across the room, sword in hand, and slipping past the ogre's defenses. Behind it, I find Isabela, of all people to run across, slicing open the beast's ankle. I see its muscles ripple in preparation to kick her back, so I drop my sword and throw myself into her side, tackling her in time to avoid the injuries a kick like that would've brought. She braces her foot on my chest as we roll and fling me off, right into the ogre's path. The beast grabs me the instant I stop moving. Now I'm hanging by one ankle, upside down, face to face with a gigantic monster of a darkspawn.

Great.

"Oh shit," Isabela says. "Sorry!"

"Yeah, that's great. Get me down!" The pirate starts forward, but more of the darkspawn swarm, creating a sea of snarling monsters beneath me, eager for me to be dropped. If I fell at this angle from this height, my neck would snap on impact. There's just no good way to get free.

The ogre brings me less than a foot from its face before roaring. I cover my face, grimacing at the spittle flying, and gagging at the stench of its breath.

"Oh that's nasty."

The darkspawn monster starts to shift me into its other hand so it can crush my body. That leaves me with one option, and honestly, any option is better than dying.

You're good?

It's me, Hope promises.

Without hesitation, I drop the barrier separating us and extend a hand towards the distant floor. The spell rips me from the ogre's grasp and flings me towards the hurlocks below. I let go of the energy the instant I cast the spell so I fall at a normal rate, and right myself the same moment I slam into one of the hurlocks' backs. I'm wrenched to my feet seconds later and thrown back by a brute of a hurlock. It flips its hammer around in its hands, twirling it with an amount of experience I would rather not see darkspawn have.

I smother Hope before she can turn into something worse as I reach out for my sword. Just as the hilt forms, the hurlock charges me. It brings the hammer over its head, but when I throw my arm up to defend myself, I brace my muscles, yet...I never feel the weight of the weapon slam down onto my sword. I chance a look only to see an arrow protruding from the side of its head. It staggers for a brief moment, and then falls to its knees, and slumps to the side, dead.

Leliana appears at my side a moment later. "That looked a little too familiar for me to stay behind the ogre."

"You could've shot it!"

"Where's the fun in that?" she retorts. "Besides, you got free well enough on your own. And you didn't get thrown into me that time."

I manage to laugh once. "That was a little too similar to Redcliffe now that I think about it."

Leliana gives me a lopsided smirk. "Perhaps you should stop throwing yourself at people about to be pummeled by ogres, yes?"

I scoff. "Don't tell me you can see that happening."

"No," she admits with a shrug. "But I figured I'd at least make the suggestion. This way, I won't feel so guilty about it when you get yourself killed doing it."

"Oh nice. Thanks, so much."

She giggles while I reach back to free my arrows of the cloth tying them into my quiver. I throw the cotton scrap aside and draw an arrow, dropping my sword, and pull my bow off my shoulders. I slap the arrow onto the bowstring and raise my arm, drawing the bow back completely. I take aim at the dimple right behind the ogre's ear, squeezing one eye shut, enjoying the tugging sensation I'm so used to in my back muscles. Leliana keeps the darkspawn back with the few arrows she scrounged up before this wave hit us, and actually resorts to drawing her daggers when she runs out.

Slowing my breathing, I wait for the ogre to raise its fists to smash someone I can't see. That leaves its neck and the weak point open, and at the earliest possible second, I let my arrow fly. My heart practically stops beating as I wait to see if I'll hit my mark.

The arrow pierces the grey flesh, burying itself as deep as it possibly can, and the ogre freezes.

In a final fit of rage, the ogre grabs the nearest hurlock, turns to me, and whips it across the thaig. Then it collapses, dead, with a thundering boom.