PART TWO: WELCOME TO MIDDLE EARTH
Welcome to Middle Earth. All original content (though not all original characters) for many chapters to come!
The Darkspawn race and origins bear similarities to the origin of Orcs in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. As the Old Gods tried to usurp Heaven, the Ainur Morgoth and his followers tried to usurp Valinor; they were cast out to Arda, where they corrupted many living things to serve them; the Old Gods were cast down to Thedas, and the Taint they brought corrupted many. Without Morgoth or his servants leading them, Orcs tend to remain underground, and often war with Dwarves, as do the Darkspawn without Archdemons.
Early winter, Dol Goldur, in Mirkwood:
For an eternity Brosca hung suspended in nothing, an infinity in every direction, the light of stars growing brilliant and dim in turn, dying and being reborn from their own ashes. The universe spun around her, and she looked into its depths. She grew old and withered and regressed to her youth a thousand times, the Song always in her thoughts, harsh and beautiful. Eons passed in an eyeblink, and the world arose before her again, a swirling mass of blue and green and white that she knew to be sea and land and sky. Her back turned to the world and she stretched out her hands towards the stars as she fell.
What a strange dream, she thought, and opened her eyes to a darkness so pure it could only be underground. The darkspawn kept crude torches in the Deep Roads, and all Orzammar was constantly alight; there were cave systems closer to the Surface, however, where no light penetrated. The eluvian must have dropped her here. She wondered where Morrigan was, if they had arrived in the same place, if the witch had left her behind.
"Undur kurv, lulgijak!"[1] A harsh, gutteral voice, like the crack of a whip and the boom of thunder, in the distance. It could have been a hurlock, although usually they only laughed their terrible laugh. Perhaps an emissary? Brosca was not sure. It echoed oddly, too far away to tell, far above her.
"Nar thos zanbaur."[2] A different voice, and then came the sound of a scuffle. A third barked out more strange words, breaking up the fight, and footsteps faded away, leaving her in near-total silence.
Not darkspawn. No darkspawn at all. Her mind stuck on that. She had to be far from the Deep Roads, which always teemed with Taint. She had little in the way of stone-sense, being an untrained casteless dwarf who had spent a year on the Surface, but she could tell that she was far underground. And yet, there was no sense of darkspawn anywhere.
Somewhere nearby, a stalactite dripped into a pool of water. She wouldn't go thirsty, at least. She lay listening to that steady drip for several long minutes, gathering stock of herself: all her fingers and toes were in working order, her neck didn't hurt, her back ached but only from lying on stone. A metal door shocked her when it clanged, far above. The echoes faded away slowly.
"I cannot lie here all day and do nothing: time is rusting," she said to herself, and got up at last. Her pack, remarkably, remained intact: the three health poultices and a small injury kit she had left were whole, her waterskin still full, her food enough to last her a few days if she rationed it carefully. She took stock of the rest of her gear and found it in good condition, even the little cooking-pot which she'd thought she'd left with Finn the night before. Her Crow dagger, which had been Zevran's before he'd ambushed them, and the small vials of concentrated Crow poison were rolled up in her Warden leathers, left in the bottom of the pack during the weeks she'd spent travelling undercover. Aodh and Veshialle, her beloved waraxes, were a bit dinged up: nothing I can't fix with some careful attention. The runes Sandal had placed on the blades, to keep a sharp edge, deliver frostbite, and burn the undead, looked like they hadn't been damaged at all. They never were: Sandal was a master enchanter.
She pulled out her dagger and coated it with the Crow poison, just in case, and slid the other vial inside a secret pocket in her leathers. Her axes she set carefully between her bedroll and Warden armour, blades facing out so if anyone jumped her from behind they would get their stomach sliced open for the trouble, and then packed everything else atop. The flint and steel she used briefly to take a look at her surroundings. The runes on the axes would glow and light her path, but they would also reveal her position to whatever beasts lived in this cave system.
Brosca strained her sense for the Taint, reaching for the Song in the back of her mind that she usually shied away from: it wouldn't hurt to tap into that once, surely, just to see if there were any others around? It might hasten her Calling, but if she didn't get out of here soon, she might not make it that long anyways.
No Wardens, and no darkspawn, not for miles. The farthest she'd ever sensed one had been at a distance of five miles, but that had been an ogre, burning far more brightly in her mind than the softer glow of hurlocks, genlocks, and sharlocks. Of course, archdemons burned brighter even than that, but hopefully she would not feel a Tainted God ever again. No Song...she could not hear the Song. She could not hear them Call to her.
Where is it? Where's the Song? You've Called to me for months, why are you silent now? The Old Gods, buried deep beneath the earth, constantly Called for someone to find them and awaken them. It was what drove the darkspawn deeper and deeper into the earth, to find their masters. It was what drove all Grey Wardens mad, eventually, turning them into ghouls like any other touched by the Taint. And now there was nothing. No Call. No haunting Song in the back of her mind, urging her deeper darker farther down—her mind was quiet, peaceful.
"This must be the other side of the world," Brosca muttered. "I must be so far away that I cannot hear them..." She had not dreamt of them, either, though that wasn't unusual. Most of the time she slept dreamlessly, as all dwarva did, except for Blight-dreams. She remembered a waking dream, between stepping into the Eluvian and waking up in this cavern: an infinity of darkness, broken only by distant glimmering points of light. She had flown among the stars and they had seemed even further away than when she had feet planted on solid ground.
"I'm not one for prayin, Ancestors," she said, looking down to the Stone as was proper, her speech relapsing to Dust Town cant. "You know that. You named me irredeemable from birth, as I recall, so you probably don't want my prayers anyhow. But please, give me, uh, strength or somethin. Stone, I wish Duran was here. He'd know what to do." He always knew what to do. Tears glimmered in her eyes; she clenched her fists and shook her head once, refusing to let them fall. She'd cried enough. He wouldn't want her to mourn him forever.
She ate a small breakfast before packing away what remained of her food. Her eyes had re-adjusted to the darkness, but it still wasn't light enough to make her way easily through the maze of stalagmites that nearly tripped her more than once. She found the pool of cave-water by listening; it reflected just enough light that she could tell there was light, and she drank deep. No evidence of bats meant that the water was clean and full of minerals, though it tasted stale, unlike the Aedros Atuna[3] which quenched the thirst for all the dwarva in Orzammar.
She made her way through the cave system with all deliberate stealth, keeping the poisoned dagger out just in case she stumbled across somebody that would rather eat her than help her. For hours she walked silently up a steady incline, then turned a corner and paused when she suddenly could see a flickering light. Far above her, somebody carried a torch. It cast dancing shadows that stretched all the way to where she stood, giving her just enough light to see a nug's-track trail going up.
"Perfect," she breathed, and fixed the path in her inner map. Now even if the torch went out, she would be able to climb up to where it had been. But for now, she tired of walking, and sat down on a convenient flat space. She rested with her back against the wall for several minutes, her eyes closed and her breathing deep. When her breaths drew evenly again, she pulled her rations out again and ate.
Presently she stood again and walked; for another few hours she continued, although twice she had to make her way carefully across fallen rubble and once find her way through a crawlspace for what seemed an Age. At last her way became lighter, and her pace quickened: she could see torchlight reflecting off the wall at the next turn. Strange voices speaking a strange tongue echoed ahead, but they sounded lower than she. Overconfident, she turned the corner and stumbled, blinded by the sudden light right at her eye-level. Her arms flung up to protect her vision, and she stepped wrongly: she flailed in open air with a shout and landed solidly on a crude table, around which three hurlocks (they couldn't be hurlocks, they had no Taint) sat playing cards.
For a moment she and the three untainted hurlocks stared at each other. Then she rolled off their card game and bolted for the open doorway she could see, her vision now cleared of spots. She didn't recognize the style of architecture at all; perhaps Tevinter, she thought, I'm in the Tevinter Imperium? Would Morrigan go there? But then, why were there hurlocks here that she could not sense? She still didn't sense them. She didn't sense the other hurlocks that startled as she raced past, either. Behind her, she heard them yelling in that strange tongue, different from the uncivilized grunting of the Darkspawn and yet just as painful on her ears. Armored feet pounded behind her, weapons slammed against shields; apparently they were trying to drive her out with sound alone.
Brosca ran as fast as she could manage, turning through doorways and crawling underneath a table to hide as a dozen couldn't-be-hurlocks run past. She became hopelessly lost: her dwarven stone-sense didn't give her any clue as to which direction is the Surface, although it was very definite that Down is That Way. She got cornered by two those-aren't-hurlocks that rounded a corner just as she did, and managed to surprise them enough that only the one got off a single blow as she sliced the other's throat, before dying himself.
They are not hurlocks. Brosca sucked in a quick breath, studying their dead forms. They don't wear darkspawn armour, their skin is grey and their features disgusting but not Tainted. They don't look like hurlocks would without the Taint. Their weapons were crude but not darkspawn-forged, and they would work better than her waraxes, still hidden away in her pack. She kicked herself for leaving her best weapons hidden away as she took one's sword and buckled it around her waist, then jammed on a helm that was far too large for her and ran again.
It didn't take more than five minutes for her to be cornered by a troop of them. "Clearly, I've gotten complacent in my dotage." She killed three of them before the sword she was unused to was knocked aside, and then another two died to her poisoned dagger. The largest of them wielded a battle-axe in one hand as easily as she would Aodh. He walked forward, brushing the other not-hurlocks aside as if they did not exist, and set the edge of his axe at her throat.
"Who dares enter Dol Goldur?" the one she would have called an Alpha had he been a hurlock snarled, pressing against her skin, just lightly enough that it didn't break through. "Who dares defy the Necromancer?"
"Khozd! Dwarf-scum!"[4] came a muttering from the other beasts, who seemed to have more intelligence than the darkspawn's bestial cunning. Their voices were gutteral, and their tongue like the crack and boom of rolling thunder. A chant swelled as they bared broken teeth at her: "Kill the dwarf-scum! Break it, eat it, grinds its bones!"
"I am a dwarf of the Grey," Nat said with as much Dust Town bravery as she could manage, but held out the dagger with two fingers and dropped it: it clattered to the ground and the alpha not-hurlock stepped on it. The Antivan steel did not break, but she wouldn't be able to grab it now if she tried. "You do not frighten me!"
"Kill the dwarf-scum, bind it break it eat its flesh boil its bones!" The chant grew louder and the creatures pressed back in eagerly. "Bind-it-break-it-eat-it-kill-it!"
"You must have come here to find the King-Under-the-Mountain! Thráin, son of Thror!" The alpha laughed abruptly, a horrible sound that made her shudder, and the chant died away to a mutter as he pulled his battle-axe from her neck. "What say you, boys, should we show our new guest the King?"
The weapons lowered, and the other creatures laughed as well, the cackling grunts that Brosca became so used to after so long fighting darkspawn. She decided not to challenge his assumption that she came there to find the King: the only dwarva King she knew was Harrowmont. King-Under-the-Mountain? Did Kal Sharok have their own King? She couldn't remember. Kal Hirol still answered to Orzammar, didn't they?
They herded her through crumbling passageways going ever higher until finally they broke out onto the Surface and she discovered that they were not in a developed cavern, as she had thought, but rather the ruins of an ancient, shadowy keep on a hill overlooking a massive forest. In the distance she could see mountains, most definitely not the Frostbacks, the only mountains she'd ever known. The dusk-dark sky was heavy with the potential of rain; clouds were settling down around them as fog, and the air had the bite of winter. It hadn't been winter in Ferelden.
Where did the mirror take me?
They passed through crumbling remains into a tower with sharp spires that looms ominously overhead. Multitudes of powerfully built not-hurlocks watched her everywhere she looked. When the sound of snarling wolves drew her attention, she looked down over the edge of a treacherous walkway to see massive wolf-like creatures snapping at each other in a pit. Not-hurlocks muttered as she passed, their eyes gleaming in the shadows, their faces lined with cruelty. Many of them had tattoos far more menacing than hers on their faces and broad bare chests.
At last they reached the top of the shadowed keep, where Something stood near a broken throne, a figure shrouded in shadow whose edges flickered as if he stood in the pupil of a great fiery eye. He saw her—he sees me—I cannot look away—
"Little dwarf. There is a shadow in you, yet it is not of you. You do not belong to me, nor to Melkor." Once before, Natia had come across ice so cold it burned her when she touched it. This voice burned her in the same way, cold enough to freeze her throat and hold her thoughts captive.
A scream wrenched from her and she fell to her knees despite the iron grip of the not-hurlocks. Insidious whispers breathed promises and threats in the darkest parts of her mind. Her thoughts turned towards the wretched beautiful call of the Old Gods, flashing through the nightmares of the Blight that hadn't quite gone away—never thought I could wish to hear Urthemiel again, she thought distantly—and she screamed again, long and loud until her voice gave way.
Time passed, what seems like hours in a bare few moments. "Take her away." The shadowed figure turned his gaze away and she, freed at last from a terrible malice she had no hope of understanding, passed out.
The butt of a sword to her temple roused her with a sharp headache; she was drawn to her feet and shoved once more. The not-hurlocks did not take her pack from her, which she thought was odd, but then again she, as their prisoner, had no hope of escape: not if they are led by that. "The Necromancer," she mumbled, and laughed and laughed at the absurdity of the name. He is not the Necromancer, he is death itself.
"Do not kill her," the strange terrible Shadow added as an afterthought.
She managed the barest glance backwards towards He as the not-hurlocks swept her out of the throne room, just as the dark clouds overhead burst open, and could see only shadows upon the empty throne. Nat turned her eyes to her feet to try and not trip over the broken stone, though it was a useless task, with her captors being twice her height and not inclined to be gentle. They came to a precipice and—
"Behold, Thráin son of Thror son of Dáin, King of Erebor!" cried the mighty, pale-eyed Not-Hurlock, and thrust her down and away.
She lost awareness of her surroundings as she fell down, down, down into a dungeon. She landed roughly, breaking her arm and probably a few ribs. She passed out again. When she awoke, she could only feel pain, that and a callous-roughened hand stroking her brow and a dwarven voice singing in a slow, deep bass a song of ancient Dwarva.
...baraka
Aznân
ra karaka
atkât...[5]
She struggled to open her eyes. An elderly dwarf with matted hair and a tangled beard sat by her, his eyes focused on days long past. He wore ragged clothes, feet bare and black with disease and cold; his body was thin and scarred and his limbs skeletal from long imprisonment. He peered at her with clouded blue eyes when he felt her stir.
"Shamukh!" he cried, and pulled her close for a hug with surprising strength. "Nâm, sigin ganarmi zusul, ya rakhâs!"[6]
"I don't understand." She pulled herself free and groped frantically in the dim light for her pack. Her ribs burned with every breath, and her arm was surely broken, though the bone had not gone through her skin, which she thanked the Ancestors for. "What was that song? What were you speaking?"
"Young you must be, if you do not know our tongue, nor Durin's Song." His fingers went to his impressively long beard and stroked it. "Nâm, long have I been alone, with only shalmêl [7] orcs for company!"
"Is that what those beasts are?"
Her pack rested on the ground where her head had been. She opened it one-handed and went through it—her waraxes were still bundled in her Warden leathers, her bedroll still neatly rolled up, but her waterskin had split open and most of her things were soaked. She brought out the remains of her food and gave him some of the jerky, which had softened in the water but hadn't gone bad, and ate the soggy hardcakes herself. One health poultice had broken, but hadn't dried up completely, so she slathered it on her arm and then splinted it.
"Eat," she said, noticing the other dwarf had not taken a bite. "You look like you need it."
"I have become used to meager fare," said he, and carefully tore off a piece of jerky. He chewed it slowly, savouring it, before finally swallowing. "Thank you."
"I have lived thirty-two years, near thirty-three," said she in answer to his earlier implied question, and breathed easier as the healing poultice went to work on her ribs. Lyrium-based magics did not affect the dwarva, after millenia spent living and breathing so near the raw veins of it: but elfroot used a magic of its own, and easily healed most non-fatal injuries. "I have never seen the like of those beasts."
"Then you are lucky, khamith[8]," said he, and peered at her more closely, his eyes cleared by the food he ate. "Mi targê,[9] you are a dwarrowdam! A khamûna[8] in the depths of the Hill of Sorcery, how came this? How came you here? Thirty-two, you said: far too young to be away from the safety of our halls."
"I fell," she said, voice blank, "and found myself in the depths of this—this hill of sorcery, this Dol Goldur, alone and far from everywhere I know. I am a scout-warrior, I will always be such, I will not remain safe while others fight in great battles: that is how I came here. My Prince, my beloved, died in my arms and I sought the witch who could have prevented it. She fled through an artifact of ancient Arlathan: a seeing-glass, called Eluvian. I went after her and...I fell, and found myself here." Brosca huddled in on herself, remembering the infinity she had witnessed between worlds, the void that stretched forever. She could not speak of it, that time between worlds, aging and dying and growing younger again. She was not sure if she truly was still only thirty-two, when she had experienced thousands of years in an eyeblink.
"Â! [10] You have come truly far. I have not heard of this Arlathan, or of a seeing-glass called Eluvian." He put an arm around her, though it shook with the effort. "Your beloved, dying in your arms: truly that is 'unkhash [11], would that I could have spared you, khamûna. I am Thráin, a Longbeard from the fallen kingdom of Erebor, King-in-Exile until the uslukh [12] is driven out."
"You are a king. Honoured, Your Majesty. I'm Brosca of Orzammar, a—" Brosca cut herself off. Orc voices echoed outside, laughing as they came closer. Thráin stood with what little strength he had left and moved in front of her. Once, he had been a formidable warrior, she was sure: the proof of that was in his bearing and the numerous scars on his hands and arms. More recent scars that could only be the result of torture showed beneath his discoloured clothing.
"Say nothing," he instructed, voice barely more than a whisper. "Hide id-fakt [13]. If they see it, they will take it."
Nat nodded, understanding the order though she didn't know the term he had used. She tossed her pack in the back corner, hurriedly scattering dirty straw over it. She returned to standing by Thráin with the hand of her unbroken arm in a white-knuckled fist just as two orcs, smaller than the others she'd seen, approached. They jeered at the two dwarves in their own language, their grins showing blackened, crooked teeth, their faces a mishmash of ugly features. Both bristled with weapons and had their belts decorated with shriveled ears, trophies from their kills.
"The Necromancer wants t' see you, Yer Majesty," said the one with the squashed nose, laughing harshly, bowing with an imitation of respect as the other pulled open the cell door.
"Let's go, dwarf-scum," growled the door-opener. Thráin stepped forward with dignity, head high and resolute. He did not look back to Nat as the door swung shut behind him. She wrapped her fingers around the iron bars and watched them until the torchlight vanished behind the curve of stone, listening to him sing a dwarven dirge as he walked to meet the Necromancer.
"Irkat-lukhud ma
katabrikihu
Ulfat-atam ma
tanakhi uduhu
bin-nât aznân tarsisi
Bazar udu agânî-furkhîn
Gurd!
Ma nîd sakhu!
Ma satf unkhai!
Atkât zatagrafizu
Zatablugi sulluzu..."[14]
They passed out of her sight, and the last vestiges of flickering torchlight disappeared when a door beyond her range of vision swung shut with a reverberating clang. Far above her, she could make out the sight of the night sky, letting in just enough light that she could see her hand in front of her face. Once she was sure the orcs had gone far enough away, she backed off from the cell door and went back for her pack. She needed to treat her arm and ribs, and quickly. Hopefully—yes—there was her small injury kit. She could set her arm properly on her own, but broken ribs could be very dangerous without treatment. She already felt a little short of breath from trying not to aggravate the injury.
The injury kit worked quickly once applied; the sharp ache dulled to something like a bruise within minutes. She breathed easier and got up from where she had been kneeling near the pack. It was in remarkable shape for going through so much; she was astonished that the orc guards hadn't seen it when they'd brought her before the Necromancer. Perhaps they simply didn't care? Perhaps they were too stupid to understand what it was? None of them had been using packs, that she'd seen, though admittedly she hadn't taken the time to look at them properly. They were ugly, evil sons of bitches that wanted to kill her; that's all she had needed to know. The Necromancer wasn't like his minions, however, and surely he could have seen it...if he could see at all.
Speaking of—she had to take everything out, see if anything could be salvaged from the split waterskin. She sat cross-legged with her back against the wall opposite the door and rummaged through everything. The Warden leathers were half-soaked, but should dry well. At least, if it didn't rain, since it looked like the cell would flood if it rained too much. Her current leathers were pretty tattered after traveling in them for so long and fighting in them so often; she decided to switch over to the azure-and-argent Warden uniform and use what was left of her un-ornamented Warden outfit to splint her arm. There had to be something here to splint it with. A dagger, perhaps? Or a sheath. Yes; the Crow dagger had a sheath about the right size. The dagger itself had been taken away by the large orc but she still had the sheath, somewhere. It wasn't quite as long as her forearm, but the break was a clean one, as far as she could tell, and if she was careful it wouldn't heal too crookedly.
Hours passed before Natia again heard a door scrape open and saw a flicker of torchlight. Two orcs, similar size to the ones who'd come for the Dwarf-King earlier and still much larger than any dwarf, scuttled backwards toward her, dragging the slumped form of Thráin between them. A third orc carried a ring of keys and a torch to light their way.
She gripped the bars of the cell as they came closer, hugging her broken arm to her chest. Thráin looked to be in a bad way. In the flickering torchlight, she could see fresh blood seeping over dried blood that had crusted on his head, and his shirt had been removed completely, revealing complicated tattoos on skin that was more bruised and broken than not. The hair on his chest was matted and brown with blood. His eyes were purple and swollen, blood bubbling in his mouth with every hoarse breath he took. She could see the edge of whip-marks curling around from his back: they had flogged him, and brutally.
The orc carrying the torch slammed it against the bars of the cell, nearly crushing her fingers. She released the bars just in time and her hand curled into a fist so tightly her knuckles turned white and her nails cut into her palm. He laughed at her cruelly and unlocked the door; it swung inward with a grating whine. He backhanded her casually, the force of the blow sending her stumbling back several steps, then stepped aside so the other two could toss Thráin within. The elderly dwarf landed in a crumpled heap on the bare stone floor and lay motionless.
"The Big Boss has plans for you, dwarf-scum," one of them said, leering at Natia. "Oh, yes, he has plans."
"Shaddup," ordered the one with the keys, pulling the door shut again. "Don't say nuthin', Audbosh, the Boss won't like it."
"What do you know, Colfaurg?" The three of them left, now focused on their own argument and ignoring the two dwarves. "You don't know nuthin."
"Ambor mabas lafut,"[15] said the third in a knowledgeable voice. "An' I want some ambor tonight."
The far door closed with an echoing clang and their arguing voices faded away with their steps. Nat dropped to her knees beside the motionless Thráin and checked him over very carefully with her uninjured hand. His head lolled when she attempted to lift him up enough to pull him onto the softer hay, and afraid of causing him neck injury she put him down again. She arranged his limbs to a more comfortable position and sat with his head on her lap, stroking his bloody brow as he muttered in the unfamiliar dwarven language, broken half-words and incomplete sentences, eyes roving under the closed lids.
Neo-Khuzdûl taken from The Dwarrow Scholar, a Wordpress website. Bad grammar is purely a result of me trying to form sentences from the complicated dwarrow language. I picture Natia's leather armor as something like the Nexus mod "Grey Warden Triss armor Retexture", sized for a dwarf, the Lothering Warden alternate version without chainmail; the Grey Warden one would be the version with the blue and white stripes.
Orkish taken from angelfire website Colloquial Black Speech for Orcs, Trolls and Men
[1]Orkish insult. Undur kurv, lulgijak: "Fat whore, flowers in the blood"; "lulgijak" is what they call an elf.
[2]Orkish insult. Nar thos zanbaur: "No sack elfson"
[3]Aedros Atuna: An underground river in Orzammar which never sees the sun. Its clay is used by dwarven artisans for crafting. Taken from the Dragon Age wiki.
[4]khozd - Orkish for dwarf
[5]part of Durin's Song, taken from A Magpie's Nest: Discussing the Lord of the Rings Soundtrack, Source Songs & Poems. Music by Howard Shore, text by Phillipa Boyens, translated by David Salo.
[6]Shamukh! Nâm, sigin ganarmi zusul, ya rakhâs! Hail/Greetings! Ahh, long had I (been) alone, with orcs!
[7]shalmêl: slime-of-all-slimes (muck, goo)
[8]khamûna / khamith: youth-lady / gender neutral term for youth that is young/new/fresh
[9]Mi targê: By my beard!
[10]Â! A expression of fright or shock
[11]'unkhash: greater/greatest sorrow
[12]uslukh: dragon
[13]id-fakt: the pack (item) noun, singular
[14]The Abyss, from A Magpie's Nest. Music by Howard Shore, words by Phillipa Boyens, translated into Khuzdûl by David Salo.
[15]Ambor mabas lafut: liquor after war. ambor is liquor