So this is how it all ends, she thinks as the darkness wraps around her, drawing her under like a sinister wave of murky water. This is where it all ends, this is the end of the line, the stop of the journey.
The end. Finish. Period.
The darkness around her feels like a living thing, like a huge monster that reaches out to trail a ghostly finger down her spine the one moment, and the next an overprotective mother that tightens her stifling embrace around her. She feels as if she can inhale it at some moments, as if its tendrils are slipping down her throat to fill her lungs with every breath she draws- perhaps they are.
She is not alone down here, she knows. She can hear them. She can feel them. Crunching sounds in the dark, of monstrous jaws gnawing on old bones; eyes and senses following her. Little creatures driven by hunger sniffing at her footsteps; the drip drip drip of water as it licks its way down ancient stalagmites. Or is it stalactites?
An irrational little bubble of laughter climbs up her through. As if I care, she answers herself.
The darkness is perhaps truly alive, she thinks as her steps carry her even deeper, to places where dark becomes even darker, as if it grows like a living thing. I certainly does feel more alive than herself as she trudges through these corridors that haven't seen light for so long, they have probably forgotten how it feels. Stumbling on unseen rocks, feeling her way with her cracked fingertips, she marches on, unerringly finding her way through the winding, pitch black nothingness.
She has the song to lead her, after all. There is no chance of her getting lost.
She turns when it fades and quickens her step when it grows louder, until it is a roar in her ears, an unholy chant that has now reached fever pitch. There is nothing else than it, a crescendo that drowns everything else out, this song that started a few months ago as nothing else than a slight murmur at the back of her mind.
The song- so dreadfully beautiful, so chillingly compelling.
She knows what awaits her as she travels towards its source, what she will encounter long before she reaches it. She is not the only one that hears it, that MUST obey its calling. She is not the only one listening to it, seeking it, feeling herself being pulled toward it.
They are here, in the dark, along with her, her dark brothers in blood. She can sense them- the darkspawn she has spend the last twenty years battling, now strangely connected to her, as if finally, after years of fighting them, she has realised that deep down inside they are the same. They are just as enthralled by the song as she is- she can feel their hunger, their desperation, their mindless droning as they search. She is one with them here in the dark- she almost pities them, almost feels a revolting sense of kinship with them.
Even so, she will take as many as she can with her before she dies- the sudden sympathy does not mean she has forgotten where her loyalty lies. In peace, vigilance. In war, victory.
And this is war. She is well aware that her dark brothers- mindless, soulless, wretched creatures that they are- will not show any pity or sympathy to her if she falls into their clutches alive. She knows they will feel no remorse raping her, feeding her their diseased flesh, changing her until she becomes even worse than them, until she becomes the horrid monster that spawns them. She knows that. She has seen it happen, she knows how it is done. They would turn her into a broodmother if given half a chance, a grotesque monster that would do nothing but spew forth more and more of these creatures till the day she dies.
For a moment, the irony is enough to make her knees buckle and her breath catch on a sob. Maker, she had tried, how she had tried. All her body had given birth to were golden-haired little corpses, lifeless copies of the man she loved. The man she still loves, the man she absolutely must not think about now, his amber eyes filled with tears as he said his last goodbyes. If she stops to think about him, she will just curl up in a little ball and cry, she knows that, so she doggedly pushes her grief and sadness away, and gets up.
Revulsion and regret still churning in her stomach, she pulls herself up and forward. The song is roaring in her head now, giving her strength, giving her the last gust of air she needs. She staggers forward, through a narrow passageway. In the huge cavern, the lit fires around which hordes of darkspawn are amassed seem as bright as suns for a moment, blinding her. She blinks repeatedly, and a second later she can see again.
Maker, they are so many. So many.
The hiss of her daggers as they leave their sheaths sounds incredibly loud. A few red, hungry eyes turn towards her; for a moment, she is staring into the eyes of a nearby Hurlock and the expression she can see there is similar to her own: fear and excitement, and the hidden hope of deliverance.
A howl sounds the alarm and the moment is broken; she finds herself with a growl of rage.
"In Peace, vigilance," she screams. "In war, VICTORY!"
She takes the time to empty a vial of potent poison down her throat before erupting forward, her twin daggers gleaming, her eyes shooting flames. "In death, sacrifice," she murmurs to herself through clenched teeth before raising her dagger high.
"FOR THE GREY WARDENS!" she bellows, and just like that, the first of the darkspawn is upon her, and falls dead with his throat slit.
Her laughter fills the huge chamber as her daggers flash and she dances around, an angel of death, a dying angel, a living flame, a life ablaze in flames.
Just for a moment... her laughter pushes the darkness back. But it won't last. She knows it, as she fights her last fight, the darkspawn know it, the darkness itself knows it.
And it waits- this bottomless, endless dark- for it knows, down here, its dominion is complete. Little fireflies like her don't make a difference- not much, not for long. She might alight the immeasurable darkness for a while, for a split second. She can laugh and drive the shades away. But it won't last. There; she receives her first wound, and her step falters. The darkness knows, and it doesn't care. Her life is ending, and she will be a tasty snack for the creatures it has spawned. She is but a firefly, briefly flashing- then it's gone. There. Another wound, this one more serious, her breath catching, then her eyes glinting. She attacks again, a fierce smile on her face, laughing through the pain. She is life and fire and-
She's gone.
Darkness, however, is forever.