Dragon Age:

Origins

(Book 1 of 7)

Chapter Eleven

Her throat was so dry.

Which made sense, considering it had been at least a day and a half since she had any water or wine or anything even close to being drinkable but she would not lay down and die, she was better than that and if she was going to die then she wasn't going to die alone and she had already made certain that a good few darkspawn had already fallen to her blade.

But it wasn't enough, they never stopped ,coming and they did not tire. And all she wanted to do was sleep, but the last time she had tried to do so she had been awoken by an awful sound like a ,scream but she had never heard any scream like that before, even when she had been at the head of a small army and seen scores and scores of darkspawn, she had not thought that even a darkspawn could sound like that.

But of ,course the shadows of the deep roads could hide a great number of horrors, not just darkspawn but other things as well. She had once heard a story from a scout about how his partner had been taken as they had slept by a massive pale spider with a dozen pale green eyes and fangs the size of greatswords, dripping with venom as thick as tar.

She had barely been able to dodge out of the way when the monster had come lunging out of the shadows, ,a pale gaunt thing with metal claws strapped over it's hands and it nearly gored her on them, its claws had gorged deep groves into the rock which she had been standing in front off, and she had taken advantage of the moment to lop it's head off before it could recover.

She had not slept since then.

The world was hazy and too loud, and every new sensation felt like being stabbed with a ragged piece of glass, and her reactions were starting to slow, the last group of darkspawn that she had come upon had nearly overwhelmed her, and one of them had cut her shoulder, and she was certain that something must have been coated on the blade as the wound burned.

She was not going to die down here; she refused to die until she saw that smug little traitor that she had been cursed to call a brother die first.

The thought of him made her blood boil, and she clenched her hands into fists as imagined how sweet it would be to cave his face in; the last time she had dreamed, she had dreamed of his teeth splintering under her first and peeling his skin off like an apple and rolling him in salt and feeding him to the vermin within the city. A thousand ways she had thought for him to die, and each one kept her warm at night.

She should have known better of course; he was her brother, yes but he was also a player in the game of hidden knives that consumed all of Orzammar and yet she hadn't been able to see it. All she had ever seen was her baby brother; all Trian had ever seen was an annoying little gnat that had always been on her side, and neither of them had seen what he was all of the time.

What fools they had been.

Well, considering that when she died, she was probably going to see her older brother again, then they could both have a good laugh about it from within the stone's embrace and plot how to make their baby brother's life a living hell from beyond death.

A rough coughing fit burst out of her mouth, and her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground and had to fight the urge to curl into a ball; she took a few deep breaths, which were the most painful she had ever taken and forced herself to stand back up and carry onward through the darkness.

The more time had passed, the more she felt like any hope she had of finding the Grey Wardens was growing smaller and smaller; she knew that it was a small hope, but she had hoped that she would find them, and they would take her to the surface, she knew enough of the Wardens from her father's stories to know that they would not just take her out of pity and if they did take her then they would expect her to fight for their cause, but that would be fine.

She could wait, they could not watch her every single second of every single day, and when they let their guard down around her enough, she would slip away and come back to Orzammar and cut her brother's throat while he slept in the bed that he stole from her.

And even if she couldn't find the Grey Wardens she would not let that keep her from her revenge.

She knew what the Darkspawn did to the women they captured, it was the stuff of her nightmares for so very long, but if it came to it now she would go with them willingly. She would become a broodmother of course, and birth tainted young by the thousands, but there would be a vein of silver in the darkness of her fate as her children would batter themselves against the walls of the city that had cast her out.

My sons will come for you Bhelen, they will sack your streets and burn the nobles out of their homes, and you will be remembered forever as the king that let Orzammar fall into the darkness.

Sereda Aeducan laughed until she cried, her tears rolling down her cheeks and she did nothing to stop them as no one would be able to see them in the darkness of the endless tunnels.

She stayed where she was for another hour until she started walking again, her tears still drying on her cheeks and her jaw aching from her smile.

The sound of rushing footsteps made her tilt her head, and she raised her blade, the muscles in her arms were burning, but she ignored the pain and readied herself for the monsters to come at her. If she was going to be dragged off, she would take some of the darkspawn with her first, she was still a warrior and her revenge came second to the shame of a clean blade.

The first to come snarling out of the darkness was a tainted ruin of a man, a human with a jagged piece of rusty metal that could have passed for a sword if she was drunk out of her mind and tunnels of the Deep Roads were even darker than they were, its teeth were rotten, pointed and stained with the liquid corruption that the tainted ones always seemed to be drowning in.

It let out a snarl and lunged at her, and Sereda stepped out of its way, slicing at the back of its legs as it went past her, and it let out a shriek as it fell to the floor before she ran him through on her blade, inky blackness dripping from the blade as she pulled it free from the monster.

But she did not even have a moment to rest as two more of the monsters came for her, these ones were corrupted versions of her own kind, and they were somewhat more cautious than their corrupted human counterpart; they hissed at her and bared their teeth and tired to circle around her which forced her to back up until her back was pressed against the cool stone of the tunnel wall.

If she had a shield, then she could try and block their blows, but she didn't, and so she needed to try and keep them back by just thrusting out with her sword, but while she could keep one away, the other would use the opening to get closer to her and soon enough Sereda could practically feel their rotten breath against her skin.

And so, with a cry, filled with all of her rage and resentment and fear, she launched herself forward and tackled both of the genlocks, knocking them both down. She turned on her foot and slashed across their backs; as they roared out their pain Sereda turned once again and half ran, half stumbled into the darkness. She needed to get away.

She wasn't sure how long she ran for, only that when she was finally forced to stop, her legs felt like they were made of stone and her lungs felt like someone had filled them with pitch and set them on fire.

It was over; all of her strength was gone. She could not run anymore and when the next group of Darkspawn came for her she would not have the strength to fight them off.

She could already hear movement in the distance; more of them were coming. But as she strained to listen to the sounds she realized that whatever was causing it was not moving towards her. They were the sounds of battle.

Sereda frowned; Darkspawn did fight against each other at times, mainly to try and claim larger pieces of the Deep Roads as a territory, but that was a rare occurrence as only the more intelligent of the tainted ones did so and according to the accounts that she had read it had never happened during a blight as the hordes fell under the sway of an archdemon.

A shriek of pain and the smell of burning made her realise that it couldn't be darkspawn fighting each other, darkspawn who could call upon magic were very rare and if there truly was a blight on the surface then that was where they would be, which meant that there was another mage down in the roads and there was only one mage that she could think off who would be in the Deep Roads.

Even though her legs screamed in protest she forced herself up to her feet and followed the sounds into a larger cavern where, moments later, the desperate flicker of hope in her heart that she would live to see another day roared into a blazing fire.

The Grey Wardens were here, the elven mage recruit was raining fire and lightening down on the tainted ones; their screams were the most beautiful thing that she had ever heard and the smell of their bodies as they lay twitching on the ground was better than any feast could ever hope to be.

The warden, that was an old friend of her father, Duncan, was at the head of them and cut through any darkspawn who was foolish enough to come close to him with the ease of a man who had done so a thousand times before, the tall female warden with a similar skin colour to Ducan who wielded two swords took the heads from a pair of darkspawn as the large burly man cut another one of the monsters in twain with his great sword.

The warden with the longbow was standing next to the elf and was letting arrows fly faster than she could keep track of and the last warden with a mace and shield surged forward to break into the darkspawn ranks; each body that fell to the ground made her smile.

She stepped forward, her mouth falling open so she could call out to them, but before she could, something collided with her back and knocked her down to the ground, landing on her back which forced her breath out of her lungs and made the world seem to tilt, she looked up to see one of the dwarfen darkspawn standing above her, and within a moment it was on top of her, it's teeth inches away from her throat.

Sereda screamed and squirmed, trying to break free, but the last of her strength was gone; all she could do now was close her eyes and hope that the pain would be over soon and that when Bhelan finally died that her rage would still be burning bright, he came to the stone.

She felt the darkspawn still and then spasm above her and when she opened her eyes she saw that her attacker had gained a new tongue, sharp and silver and dripping black blood. She turned her head to the side to make sure that none of the blood would go into her eyes or her mouth, not that it was a good idea to get it on her skin anyway but she would take her victories at this point, however small that they were.

The still twitching body was hurled off of her, and Sereda wondered for a moment if she had been to quick to dismiss the positive aspects of having her throat ripped out when she saw the casteless bastard who had ruined the proving that had been held in her honour standing above her, his dagger held tightly in his hand. "Well, hello again, princess. Well, considering I won those provings and now this I think we can consider me your champion in every aspect now."

She would have spat at him for that if the world would stop spinning for a few seconds and it would stop getting so dark, but neither of those things happened and so instead she simply allowed herself to fall back into the darkness.

When she woke again, the ground was softer than she expected it to be, and there was a breeze that she had only ever felt when she had been in caves with openings to the surfaces in them, but it was at her feet, and the roof was moving, in a way that stone never could. She reached up and ran her fingers over the roof, the rough fabric made her frown.

"Ah, you are awake," the voice shocked her, and she pulled her hand back before pushing herself up, Duncan sitting in the corner with his sword in his lap with a whetstone at his side. He smiled at her as he rose to his feet. "How are you feeling?"

"Terrible, but I'll live," Sereda ran her fingers through her hair and swallowed to try and rid some of the dryness from her mouth. "Where are we? We are not in the Deep Roads anymore, are we?"

Duncan sighed and looked uncomfortable for a moment, "No, I am afraid that we are not. We are on the surface."

For a moment, terror gripped her heart, and the order to take her back to Orzammar was on the tip of her tongue when everything came back to her with the force of a golem throwing a boulder at her; she could not be exiled for being on the surface if she had already been exiled. "I see, well then it seems that I must thank you Grey Warden as I owe you my life."

"You owe me, nothing Princess, I was simply glad to help you," Duncan said with a slight tilt of his head that might have passed as a nod. "Though I must ask why it was needed, what happened to you? When we left Orzammar, you seemed to be on top of the world. You were ready to take on your role as commander of all the city's forces; how is it then I found you in the Deep Roads with nothing but rags to your name?"

"Betrayal and having a viper for a brother, Bhelen betrayed me. He set our older brother and me against one another pouring poison in both of our ears and making himself seem like nothing more than an innocent lamb to our royal father, I was found guilty of murdering Trian and exiled from the city to die in the Deep Roads, but I knew there was a chance that I would find Wardens down there whose pity I could throw myself on."

"I see; your Father always warned me how terrible the game of politics could be in Orzammar but even so," Ducan sighed heavily. "You are indeed fortunate, you found us on what was to be our last day down here. I wanted to see how both of our new recruits dealt with the Darkspawn, and I am glad that I did so. I am truly sorry for your fate my lady but there is nought that I can do to help with that, what I can offer you is a place to belong. A place among the Grey Wardens."

Sereda smiled, the image of strangling Bhelen behind her eyes as she spoke the words. "I accept."

End of Chapter