Carver ducked under a flaming branch. "Solona, how are your ice spells!?"
The mage side-stepped with a twirl of her staff and struck it on the ground, only to dodge another attack. "Not my best area!"
Sigrun whipped about with her shortswords, smiling. "Trees smell good."
Nathaniel and Leliana blinked at her.
"Better than the Deep Roads!" Sigrun defended.
The dwarf hacked at their enemies with shortswords, flinching at the resultant spray of embers while Nathaniel and Leliana fired arrows from a distance. Charred sylvans were stalking the Wending Wood, and whenever Solona directly struck them with her staff, her ice would only last long enough to drip away as water. At Leliana's disapproving frown, Solona refrained from setting the whole forest on fire.
The sylvans suddenly shoved their gangly arms into the earth, and Carver swiftly ran aside pulling his fellow front-liner, Sigrun, along. A prison of bramble instantly sprung up from the earth, chasing after the two of them before the shrubbery finally tapered off. Sigrun rolled under a monstrous swing while Carver spun around it, whipping his sword out at the closest sylvan's leg.
"Bloody blondes," Solona muttered, hooking the crook of her staff over a sylvan's arm and swinging herself up. "First Anders, now this crazy Dalish woman!"
Solona ran up the sylvan's arm, hissing at the heat, before shoving her staff down its face and loosing a cone of fire. The warden then summoned a pile of dirt over it, dampening the now thoroughly charred corpse.
Sigrun slipped a corked clay bottle out of her things and threw it at the sylvans. "I guess no holds barred?"
The sylvans blew up in a cloud of lyrium dust.
The party looked at the legionnaire.
Her cheeks dimpled. "In the Legion, they're called grenades."
Dwarven explosives were usually reserved for closing off entrances against darkspawn, with a range of power refined for accurate detonation. No dwarf wanted the Deep Roads collapsing over their heads in the process of sealing it. Sigrun probably had a variety of combustibles stowed away in her pack.
Solona descended from her victim. "Why didn't you throw one of those at the dragon earlier?"
Sigrun sheathed her swords. "What if the dragon unleashed its breath on us while the grenade was in mid-air?"
Everyone shivered.
Leliana scanned the woods. "The Dalish woman who created these sylvans must know we survived."
"Her animosity is unprecedented," Nathaniel remarked. "She blames humans for massacring her clan and abducting her sister while she was scouting Amaranthine City. However, my people and I knew of no clan in these parts. Merchants rarely deviate from the Pilgrim's Path, which means bandits don't either."
"Darkspawn," Carver pointed out. "If they can plan an ambush, they can stage a murder. We should comb these woods for the ones that had orchestrated this. They must be monitoring the path from nearby, and should thus have some manner of evidence between themselves. We might even find that woman's missing sister."
The party agreed and strayed from the merchant's road for the dense forest around them. Carver had rushed into this plot for a reason. It bade well for no one that darkspawn were growing intelligent enough to recognise surfacers' social issues and emphasise them. While Warden Utha, the Architect, and the Mother likely couldn't convey the full history of elven and human animosities to awakened darkspawn, it didn't mean they couldn't teach them to take advantage of it.
Despite the fact that Carver had discovered and helped end the blight several months earlier than canon, he hadn't been able to buy Amaranthine time against this crisis. Warden Utha had evidently succeeded in her experiments sooner, due to darkspawn kidnapping more wardens from the Clash at Ostagar and making warden blood more accessible.
Carver swallowed his guilt.
The party quickly tore through a darkspawn camp in the woods, found an elven locket in it, and tripped over a tainted bandit. The brigand begged for relief, revealing that darkspawn had wiped both his band and the Dalish clan out before planting the bandits' weapons in the clan's camp. The darkspawn had left him to suffer, and either die or become a darkspawn. Solona's face hardened as she accepted a dagger from Leliana and swiftly, painlessly killed the bandit.
They eventually stumbled over the remains of a Dalish encampment, where human weapons littered the outskirts. Further in were clumsy rows of shallow graves. Only one bivouac stood high, the dirt in front of it worn and trampled.
"I won't stop."
The party whirled around to see the Dalish woman leaning on a wooden stake behind them.
She rested her staff's butt on the ground. "Return my sister, and I'll leave these woods. Of course, I only need one messenger."
Carver held out the elven locket at the same time the trees rustled overhead with sudden wind.
The woman bolted up, the rustling dying out. "How do you have my sister's locket!?"
Carver held out a hand behind him as the woman rushed forward, snatching the trinket from his grasp. The party shifted behind Carver, delaying a draw of their weapons as he explained the darkspawn's manipulation to the elf.
The woman pursed her lips. "Seranni would never willingly part with this. If you speak true, shemlen…then I've killed innocent people."
Nathaniel interjected. "The Wending Wood is still unsafe, so long as these darkspawn haunt the area. As the arl of Amaranthine, I will remember your help in restoring peace to the forest, should you give it."
"I can solve this myself." The woman lifted a blistering, hurt gaze. "Why would I want your help?"
Carver glanced back, noting Nathaniel's stiff expression. The arl's mind was currently a war room, trying to negotiate the justice demanded of the woman's actions, and the fact that delivering such justice on a misled elf would shake Amaranthine's young stability. Nathaniel was already working tirelessly on digging the arling out of the political mess his father had buried it in. The city elves of Denerim would no doubt criticise Nathaniel's actions from certain angles, and the elves had grown more influential in recent months.
Carver cut in. "We would be more eyes to find your sister."
The woman hesitated while Carver saw Leliana hold Nathaniel back in his periphery.
Finally, the elf straightened. "I am Velanna of Clan Ilshae, and Seranni is the last of my family. I would do anything for her." She pivoted off. "Come, there is an abandoned mine north of here. The darkspawn spill out of there, from what I've observed."
As the party hesitantly followed from a distance, Leliana pulled Nathaniel and Carver further back to whisper. "Carver can find a way to diplomatically balance the scales, arl. Isn't that right?"
Carver shot her a look. "I don't have an answer for everything. Still…Arl Nathaniel, has Lord Eddelbrek of the Feravel Plains pushed for more protection since your induction?"
Nathaniel blinked. "He and Bann Esmerelle have always been at odds with each other. Lord Eddelbrek is the largest farm-holder of Amaranthine, second only in importance to Bann Esmerelle who owns the City of Amaranthine. Both require armed troops for protection. My father had used to cater to Bann Esmerelle's needs, before I learned that this left our farmlands destitute. I have since provisioned resources to the Feravel Plains."
Sigrun perked up with a whisper. "I thought the capital here was Amaranthine City?"
"The City of Amaranthine refers to the bannorn," Leliana helped.
Because Fereldens.
"Lord Eddelbrek is still insisting for more aid, though," Carver deduced. "His farmers may have learned to take matters into their own hands. Clan Ilshae's camp bears scorch marks consistent with months' old fire, and the charred sylvans Velanna had animated and set alight were all northwest of the camp. Hafter River runs from the Feravel Plains down south to the west of the Wending Wood. Farmers could have traversed south to dissuade Clan Ilshae from their farmland by burning the clan's camp. It also explains why bandits have been pushed this far out from the plains."
Nathaniel groaned, rubbing his temples. "Poverty will drive anyone to desperate lengths, and the Howes are at fault for not granting proper protection. Still, I can't excuse farmers from threatening Dalish with fire, and Velanna from killing innocent people."
Solona hummed from the side. "Blame the deaths on bandits."
"And sweep Velanna's crime under the table?" Nathaniel curtly rejected.
It would motivate the Howe family to grant protection to the Feravel Plains and routinely sweep the Pilgrim's Path. It would also give them an excuse to take troops from Amaranthine City. As for compensation to the merchants' families, the Howes could take on the burden. Carver believed Nathaniel could see it done, given how quickly Carver expected Amaranthine would economically recover under the arl's insight. However, Carver didn't envy the unfair work ahead of Nathaniel if the Howe family did so.
Carver's lips thinned. "There's no good solution before us at present. Let's focus on the immediate matter for now."
Everyone agreed and followed Valenna down into an abandoned silverite mine. Aged wooden planks creaked under their feet, and rotting ropes swayed from rusty pulleys as they descended a roughly-hewn tunnel of rock. Sunlight filtered past the Wending Wood's towering trees, past underbrush, before finally scattering against the white-blue lustre of silverite ores that ran along their path in protruding bands.
Where the original miners had struggled opening up the earth between the ores, the darkspawn had apparently dug more thoroughly without care for ease of movement. The party sometimes had to navigate toppled disks of ore and earth, or crawl low enough to hear the trepidation rapidly beating in their chests. When their path finally opened up into the remains of a multi-storied mine complex, everyone collectively breathed a sigh of relief.
Carver squinted through the dim cavern. Though the chains of silverite no longer carried the sunlight this far, the amber haze of torches around the corner lent his sight a sense of colour again. When able, darkspawn lit light sources where they could, even alone in the Deep Roads.
Solona shifted between two tunnels, loose silt and rock pushed away from both. "I sense darkspawn…everywhere ahead."
Velanna shoved past her to inspect the tunnels. "We'll just have to go down both of these to find my sister."
Nathaniel cut in. "We should make sure we can still return to the surface."
Carver shook his head. "Though darkspawn dig with their hands, their tunnels are stable no matter the type of earth they burrow through. Even before Amaranthine discovered those sentient darkspawn, normal darkspawn have been capable of making highways to the surface for centuries, particularly in the hinterlands of Tevinter and the Anderfels. They just lack a sense for the surface's location without an archdemon's direction."
Nathaniel looked at him. "How do you know this?"
"It was in a book," Carver dismissed. "By Brother Florian, I believe."
Nathaniel turned thoughtful. "I've read Brother Genitivi, but I've never read Brother Florian –– wait. Brother Florian of Churneau? The Orlesian?"
"I guess," Carver replied.
"You can read Orlesian?" Nathaniel remarked.
"Not well," Carver corrected. "I heavily rely on context clues, and I'm sure my pronunciation is so cringeworthy as to be weaponized."
Leliana blinked. "You taught yourself Orlesian?"
Carver internally panicked. "It…uh…shares enough terms on paper with Sp—Rivaini for me to deduce what I'm reading, and from there, how it's conjugated."
"Do you also know Antivan?" Nathaniel asked.
"…I've had a passing interest," Carver admitted.
Sweet Maker, he felt like he was being interrogated. Nathaniel and Leliana's attention was in reality pointless. Antivan had a Latinised alphabet like Orlesian and strongly resembled a language Carver was familiar with: Italian. However, the language of Antiva's capital was a dialect that also had a remarkably high lexical similarity with Spanish, and was only legible for Carver by using his understanding of both Italian and Spanish to translate it.
The best Carver could describe it, the region must have witnessed a disparity like langue d'oc and langue d'öil that with political borders had eventually been standardised and recognised as Rivaini and eastern Antivan. Most of Antiva seemed to practise modern Italian, while the coastal Antiva City spoke its Spanish-Italian dialect. Thus while Carver could probably read and grasp Antivan text, he wouldn't be able to effortlessly read anything from Antiva's capital, which was what produced most intellectual works he would come across anyway.
Velanna rolled her eyes. "So the answer is the same: we take either tunnel first."
The party stepped forward for one tunnel, before stumbling. Carver caught himself on Nathaniel, who bonelessly collapsed on the ground. Everyone around Carver began dropping like flies as a sweet thought crept to the forefront of his mind.
The desire to sleep.
Carver knelt, then lied on his side. Against his will, his eyelids drooped closed.
Above him in an alcove of the cavern, he barely made out the figures of an armoured dwarf, and a spindly humanoid physically fused with long robes and a headdress.
The party woke up together on a bed of dried grass wearing nothing but their smallclothes.
It sounded like the start to a spicy Antivan novel, however it felt like anything but. Carver fought a splitting headache as he sat up to the sight of decrepit stonework and metal bars. The original miners had apparently known to carve out and maintain a jail, given they had essentially been their own law enforcement while in isolation. The darkspawn had taken full advantage of it. Carver couldn't shake the bars free, and he lacked the tools to attempt the door lock.
Velanna moaned. "Where are we?"
Nathaniel and Solona leaned on the bars, livid.
"The darkspawn took my grandfather's bow from me," the former muttered.
"And Richu's staff," the latter added.
"Darkspawn?" Leliana echoed. "That tall, grey thing counts as one?"
"You saw him too?" Sigrun noted. "He was with a dwarven ghoul, but they both watched us fall asleep with eerie calmness. They seem more sane than the talking darkspawn."
"They're in charge," Carver exhaled, leaning his forehead on a bar. "It was faint, but the dwarven ghoul's armour had griffons on it. The tall darkspawn was also wearing a fine dress of resilient material, if tattered and dirtied with time. The pattern was unlike any culture's I've seen, meaning the tall darkspawn hails from either obscure origins, or old and nearly forgotten ones. Either way, he possesses the magical skill to put us to sleep, and must predate the creation of the darkspawn we've encountered so far."
Solona frowned. "Meaning he could have created them. Including the one that emissary called 'Mother.'"
Leliana touched Solona's shoulder in silent concern.
A rattle beyond the sight of their cell immediately had everyone on their feet, before an elven ghoul with branching face tattoos crept over.
Velanna leapt at the bars. "Seranni! Creators, what have they done to you!?"
The ghoul lowered a hand, wincing. "Shh, Velanna. I don't have much time before the others check on all of you, and I can't be caught down here."
Sigrun gaped. "You're a sentient ghoul?"
"She's my sister," Velanna vehemently denied.
Seranni unlocked their cell and smiled grimly. "No time to explain, but I can say that this was my choice. These darkspawn are like us, Velanna. They seek freedom and coexistence with a world trained to hate them. They're just children who know only violence but are capable of learning peace."
The young ghoul quickly vanished down the hall as Velanna threw the cell door open and vainly debated which doors down the end Seranni could have taken.
"Seranni, wait! Wait!"
One of the doors swung open to reveal a group of armoured darkspawn.
Carver felt himself, confirming even his hidden dagger had been taken. "Blood and ashes," he swore.
Velanna's face turned thunderous as she slammed her knees and hands on the ground. A sudden tremor consumed the floor and walls, then a sprout of large tree roots, then—
SHHHK!
A splash of blood.
Carver removed his undershirt and threw it over the smallest pool of blood. The party briskly crossed for the door the darkspawn had opened before anyone could touch the taint.
They warily crept through the remains of a recently refashioned mine complex, now home to gruesome, disturbing, and apparently failed experiments. Carver stopped counting the number of human, elven, or dwarven corpses strapped to a stone slab or pierced with needles that the party passed. The corpses were all in various stages of the taint.
Solona's hands balled into fists at the sight.
Unsure where they were headed, the party slunk down any tunnel with sufficient torchlight. When they crossed paths with animated yet lifeless failed experiments, Solona and Velanna together wiped them out. Everyone was disgusted to notice that not only was their stolen gear on these failed experiments, but that the experiments matched the gear's owner by race and gender. Paranoia sprouted up Carver's back like a rash as he donned his finery, armour, dagger, and Summer Sword that had just come off a ghoul. Fortunately, Solona could heal everyone of open wounds as a spirit healer to avoid the risk of anyone acquiring the taint.
Carver knew the Architect's intentions for his experimentations, but he still struggled to comprehend the reality.
Unfortunately, due to the party's noise, darkspawn and dragonlings began stomping for their direction. Carver motioned for Leliana to join him in room clearing now that they had their gear, and the bard quickly agreed, falling in line behind him. Without a mabari, the task was difficult, but the method was solid enough for just the two of them to lead the way through unknown spaces. Velanna learned to restrain herself from unleashing an earthquake or a bramble prison while her allies were charging at nearby enemies. The party even found and picked up a preserved dragon egg in the process. They managed to develop a sense of synergy before they stumbled into a great hallway whereupon its stone doors closed behind them.
Above from another floor stood a spindly darkspawn, a dwarven ghoul, and Seranni.
Solona glared at Utha. "Have you forgotten the Order, traitor, or are you a lowly thief!?"
Next to the dwarven ghoul, the Architect raised a hand.
Carver eyed the many tunnels in the hall's ceiling. "They're not here to talk, Solona, they're here to watch. We're in the middle of an experiment!"
KraaaaaaaAAA!
Two tainted dragons violently descended from the tunnels, clawing at the party. Everyone scattered like ants in time to dodge a snap of tainted fangs. The dragon thralls skittered on the ground without the gas to keep them afloat, and pivoted hard for the nearest prey.
Carver cut in with his sword to buy Leliana time to leap back.
The bard avenged him with two swift arrows. "The righteous stand before the darkness, and the Maker shall guide their hand!"
A dragon thrall threw its head aside with a piercing screech, blinded in one eye.
Carver rushed the other blind one while it wailed, catching a snap of its jaws with Summer Sword. The beautiful golden blade lit up a blinding holy white before Carver unleashed a smite with a heavy slash.
KRAAAAA!
BOOM.
Carver pressed his advantage with a surgical jab of his blade. His utmost trust in Leliana had him unflinchingly engage while arrows barely missed him and struck the dragon thrall. Aside, fire and stone fists beset the thrall's counterpart. For better or worse, the dragon thralls were only capable of spreading fear and the taint, and not also breathing elements. That, or the Architect was curious how long his experiments would last without using their breath. The Architect had irritating high faith in a warden's ability to survive the test, as if "wardens can't die" was merely a fact.
The hall suddenly trembled.
In unison, Carver leapt back with Leliana as the tremors crescendoed into a bursting forest of sharpened tree roots. The dragon thralls barely managed a squawk before the roots violently twisted together and drilled straight through them. Velanna then grit her teeth and rose both hands to the sky, spearing the drill at their indifferent audience.
In a perfect circle around Utha and the Architect, the wood flurried into harmless fibres.
Seranni briefly glanced at her sister who had directed the drill away from her, then looked to the Architect. The spindly darkspawn lowered a hand, peered at Solona, then wordlessly turned away.
Seranni and Utha followed him.
"Seranni?" Velanna cried out.
It was in vain. The Architect collapsed his side of the hallway with a gesture, sealing off any access to where the three tainted bystanders had departed from. Seranni evidently supported the Architect's experiments to any length.
The earth shuddered, and Carver quickly pushed everyone to run for the closest opening. Velanna's shock and the exhaustion of facing two dragon thralls seemed to steal the strength from everyone's limbs, turning their fleeing for the surface into a desperate escape from a sinkhole. When they finally reached solid ground beneath the shade of emerald trees, everyone collapsed, panting. The Architect had seen fit to completely rid of surface access to the Deep Roads.
Velanna shook her head. "I don't understand. The darkspawn have misled Seranni somehow, twisted her beyond the limits of her body."
While burying her kin in shallow graves, Velanna hadn't noticed that the darkspawn under the Architect had captured two elves from her clan, a male and Seranni. Based on a tattooed corpse the party had passed in the mines, the male had committed suicide under their experiments, while Seranni had survived and come to sympathise with them.
"When in capture," Carver breathed, "victims might develop affection for their captors as a self-defence mechanism for their minds."
Velanna whipped her gaze to Solona. "You're a Grey Warden, yes? They say wardens can sense darkspawn even deep underground."
Solona breathlessly nodded.
"Then I'm swearing into your Order," Velanna stated as fact. "I will find my sister through whatever means necessary, and speak with her."
Leliana wiped sweat from her crooked brow. "You might die in the Joining."
"I do not fear death," Velanna scolded. "My sister means everything to me. Enlist me now."
Solona's breathing steadied. "I can't. Not until Warden-Commander Duncan completes the Joinings needed in Denerim."
"Then I pledge my service to you," Velanna declared. "Don't think of trying to lose me."
Nathaniel blinked at the flipped statement, then surrendered to the absurdity.
"The Order is a lifelong devotion," Sigrun pointed out to Velanna. "Should you ever find and convince your sister to leave the darkspawn, you will still be sworn to a life separate from hers. There might be other ways to search for Seranni."
"Yet none more efficient than taking on Warden abilities," Velanna dismissed. "It's enough to know she'll be safe after I reason with her. What are we waiting for? Let's find more darkspawn."
It was at that moment a ring of arrows were drawn at the party.
Carver scanned their surroundings, confirming that a crowd of Dalish were warily observing the people that had crawled out of an abandoned mine.
One of the Dalish archers lowered his bow. "Velanna?"
"Marren," Velanna recognised, tone softening. "You found a new clan."
The ring of arrows hesitantly dispersed, the Dalish dismissing the warden's party as they continued their trek through the woods. The party stood up and joined the archer, Marren, atop a forest floor that was at higher elevation.
Marren replaced his arrow in his quiver and loosened his bow. "Just because we disagreed with you, did you believe we wouldn't be able to find a clan to accept us?"
Velanna's jaw clenched. "I never said that. You had a choice to stay."
"The First wanted to attack Amaranthine City," Marren mocked, "and half of the clan agreed with her suicidal mission. What choice did you think the rest of us had?"
Velanna faltered from hugging Marren in a greeting usually suited for clanmates. "…I'm glad that it sounds like you and the rest are happy now."
Marren pivoted off with a sneer.
Velanna called out to him. "If you see Seranni, please…be understanding and patient with her."
Marren froze.
Then muttered. "My clan and I spotted darkspawn creeping north through nature along the Pilgrim's Path. Stick to the road. And…I'm sorry about what happened to the clan." The archer continued walking without looking back.
Nathaniel straightened up. "The Pilgrim's Path…!"
"Vigil's Keep is in danger," Solona recognised.
"And Amaranthine City," Leliana agreed. "We must support both quickly."
The party hurriedly raced for the Pilgrim's Path cutting through the Wending Wood, then north for where their horses awaited, tied to the forest's last few trees near a stream.
"We don't have enough people or time," Nathaniel cursed. "All of you – I ask you to take the wardens from Vigil's Keep and defend Amaranthine City in my stead. I will protect my family's home myself."
Carver placed a hand on Solona's arm before she could protest. "I'm coming with you, arl. Solona, there's a guard-constable named Aidan where you go; seal off the city's smuggler tunnels with his help. He should be up-to-date on Amaranthine's smuggling problem. This will give the darkspawn less means to infiltrate the city."
"Got it." Solona returned Carver's firm grip. "Be safe, cousin."
"And you."