Disclaimer: Chapter one.

Woo! Not nearly as popular as my ME fics, but I'm not really surprised. Still fun to write, and that's all that matters.

"Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet thousand, then a hundred."

-Catullus, Poem 5. circa 54 BC.

Progress had been quick on the first day. Stehldye announced a break for the night while she updated the vellum and made notes about different aspects of the caverns and crannies they came across. She was no smith or miner, but the surface did not dull her Stone Sense, yet, and she wanted to make full use of it along the way. After all, they were going to have to make this road not only accessible, but safe to use later.

As they settled down, she used that ability to find a significantly small enough cranny for herself, her gear, and just enough room left over to do her work. A smokeless lamp she purchased for the venture flickered its light as she scribbled and drew, making notes in the margins. Her fingers were black with the charcoal before she was done. Wiping her hands on a rag she used to clean her armor, she laid back and opened her last letter from Alistair for some "light reading" before bed.

Even with her momentary privacy, however, she made sure her reading was quick and chose not to bring herself too deeply in the things he was thinking about doing to her from the other side of Ferelden; she had a strong suspicion that two of the men she had brought with her were posturing about, trying to get her attention as potential mates, and wouldn't it be something if they found her with her hand in her pants when she was just trying to relax before sleep?

She didn't want to think about that. Sure, she used to liked sleeping around, but toward the end of the Blight she'd... stopped. She'd like to say she'd just gotten over the novelty of surface men, and she did her best to encourage Alistair to branch out a little, if only to be even, but...

And I know you, he'd written on after he'd gone into detail about where he'd prefer to keep his ears rather than with the prattle of Denerim nobility, and although it would make the meetings that much more interesting, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't get away with it in court without me getting tarred and feathered and you getting publicly flogged for being some sort of adulterous witch-dwarva bent on stealing the throne for your brother-in-law. I'd rather not have someone else publicly flog when I could do it, and though I'm sure we'd have a much better time of it, people'd get upset and we'd be right back in the mess we started.

She couldn't help but smile at that. King Alistair was a man of milestones, in office and in battle just as he was in romance, and outside of the surfacer taboo of keeping sexual matters quiet, he had no problem pushing boundaries right along with her once he reached them.

Ah, my love. I again wrote most of the letter telling you what I'd do to you if you were here, but not about how much I miss you. If anyone else were to read this, they'd spread rumors all across the court about how their king was a deviant pervert lusting after powerful dwarven women. I'm not going to say that isn't true (and it's absolutely your fault that it is!), but as much as I miss... all that... with you, I more miss just being with you. The bed in the castle is large and comfortable enough, sure, but I'm beginning to believe that the best nights of my life were spent wrapped around you beneath a thin tent with the Blight making a racket in our heads as we slept.

Don't worry, I will do everything I described to you eventually, but first, I would just like to kiss you, to be near you. I've been sneaking out a lot to the taverns by the docks, and I keep thinking I'd love to bring you with me and just walk the way with you, holding hands. It's sounds silly, doesn't it? That the thing I want the most right now with my absent mistress is to hold her hand and take a walk to the waterfront, talking about armor and darkspawn and whatever else. But I fantasize about it every time I go. I imagine that you're right here beside me, and I can almost feel your rough, little hand in mine.

She scoffed a little at that. "At least he got the rough part right."

I miss you so much. Let me know when you're coming back in the next letter, will you? If you won't, I swear the next letter will be just me writing "I miss you" over and over for several pages. And don't think I won't follow through; I'm very close to scratching our names together all over the throne's armrests like some besotted teenager as it is, and this is a slightly less insane way to express my daily frustration.

She knew he wasn't bluffing; he'd done something similar before when she was in Amaranthine and she wasn't keeping him up-to-date with the goings-on there. Except instead of a silly letter, she'd received a messenger whose only purpose was to follow her around—absolutely everywhere—until she gave him something to bring back to the king. What she sent back was a full report, down to the minutia of the local trade. It was the driest thing she ever wrote, ending with a very terse admonishment of his abuse of authority and that the boy he sent could've been killed during his errand when she went to the Blackmarsh.

I can't think of anything else to write, so I'll leave you to whatever it is a Paragon does when they aren't looking for dangerous, soul-stealing anvils. (Not "more anvils", I hope.)

Yours always,

Alistair

"Yours always," she repeated aloud, frowning and folding up the papers to put back into her pack.

Alistair didn't think Vartag Gavorn, a straight-forward and bossy man, would make very good conversation while traveling the Deep Roads, and he was right.

Not that he wanted to talk to him, necessarily, but the trip was uneventful as it was. If there were darkspawn along the way, Stehldye and her group had already taken care of them. All Alistair could take from the experience was that they were going up, and down, and through some very winding passages very quickly. He attempted to engage a couple times at small talk, but not knowing what dwarves talk about (not the weather, certainly), he gave up on the attempt very quickly.

In fact, he was surprised when, several hours in, Vartag had said something other than an implied order to follow him through another strange opening or crevice. "Is 'Stehldye' a name from the surface?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I apologize, your highness, I'm aware that flew out of the chasm," Vartag said. "But I had wondered, and you knew the Paragon much longer than I have."

"As far as I know, she was named for her father. A last-ditch effort from her mother to get him to stay, as I'm told."

"Is that so? Strange. Stehldye isn't a very masculine name. Among dwarves, that is."

"She was named for him, but I believe it was changed to reflect that she was his daughter. Why not ask her yourself?"

Vartag gave a strange look that Alistair didn't miss, then looked back out ahead. "I guess I could have."

"O...kay... Well, then, if I may ask you a question, since you've known King Bhelen much longer than I?"

"Go on."

"I get the feeling he's not... entirely behind Stehldye's plan for a new thaig, but it's his idea, isn't it?"

"Kind of a strange question."

"Is it? He isn't the type of person who allows people to move against him, to put it mildly."

Though the words could certainly be slander against his king, Vartag didn't seem to react in offense. "You speak truth. Fine. She intends to do the impossible, and he worries he'll lose the Paragon he gains such support from."

"Then why go along with her plan at all? He said himself that she needed his approval for the use of the Legion. He could have said no. I doubt she would've gone forward without his backing."

"Hah. And if your Andraste rose from where she was buried and said to you she would hand your kingdom an expansion into Orlais with a grand battle, would you tell her 'That's very kind of you, but I'd rather you just stood around and looked pretty'?"

"Andraste was cremated, not buried. And that's not exactly the same thing."

"Isn't it? Do you know what it means to be a Paragon to the dwarves?"

"Of course, but I seem to remember a certain noble with machinations to become king suggesting that if the last Paragon didn't work out, maybe we should let him know about her... unfortunate end, instead of bringing her back."

"Paragon Branka didn't rise up from the dust to defeat the Blight, then come back with a human army to defeat what was left at our gates despite how she was treated. She didn't perform miracles and convince humans to pour titles upon her entirely by her merits."

Alistair blinked. Wait a second... "That is a point. Say, Vartag, you're of the noble caste, right?"

"Aye, of House Gavorn. Why?"

"Nothing, no reason." Maker, he's one of the suitors, isn't he? I am not prepared for this. "Let's just... continue on, shall we?"

The children die. Do not think of it. You will make more, the faraway voice sang and murmured.

Are you not comfortable? So far beneath the rock. No one can reach you. No rain can chill you, no wind can pull you. And if someone dangerous does approach, throw the children at them. You will make more, my beauty.

Let them protect you as you protect yourself. Let them feed you the flesh of your betrayers. The ones that deserved death. The ones that no one mourned. Feast upon their marrow, and bring your children to me.

Broodmother.

Stehldye awoke with a start from a dead sleep. Had anyone been in her little chasm to see, she would have made them jump for sure. "What sort of sodding, tainted nonsense..." She sighed and put it to the back of her mind. She had more important things to do right now than think about what her blasted Grey Warden dreams meant. How humans and elves can get anything done with their sleep getting interrupted by this brontoshit is beyond me.

The dreams always were a little worse in the Deep Roads. If it weren't for that, she'd have the best sleep of her life in these chasms, at least compared to the thin tents at camp and the constantly creaking and shifting buildings humans threw together out of pebbles and mud.

"Well, let's get going. We have a lot of ground to cover and the sooner we get there and start working, the sooner we can bring in the settlers." she said as she exited. The men looked up at her, all eager to please, and got their gear together without a word of protest.

The darkspawn were getting thicker, a sign that they were getting close. To be completely honest, this was the sort of thing she felt the most right doing. Making tough decisions... sure, she can do that from time to time, but it wasn't what she was raised doing. In Dust Town, the biggest her decisions could affect were three others besides herself, and though they could mean life or death for any of them, these the most important people in her life, the answers changed drastically as the scale changed.

And a family? That was Rica's job for her whole life. She was the motherly one, the caring one, the one who knew how to calm people down, take care of their mother, and educate children. Stehldye was a good talk, sure, and maybe she knew how to care about her troops, but she didn't have anything remotely matronly or nurturing about her.

Bashing heads, on the other hand? She can do that until the Ancestors came home. It was the one thing she was truly good at. And the whole Grey Warden thing just specialized that skill a little more. If she was going to found a sodding thaig, then she might as well go about it with her whole worth. And Orzammar, grand and terrible Orzammar, needed her most for that quality.

But is that what Orzammar will need the most from her for the foreseeable future?

The men she had with her, not having worked along side a Grey Warden in such a capacity before, seemed in a perpetual state of awe on how she could sense the darkspawn attempts at ambush time and time again. They were eager to compliment on it, and never let it be said that a dwarven man didn't know how to flatter a woman. There was something comforting and familiar about it, even if it wasn't the most welcome attention for the moment.

No doubt her prospects for marriage were just as eager, whoever they may be. Ugh, she had no interest in the noble caste of Orzammar, as much as they defer to her now. They were still rotten with politics, and she didn't have any wish to have two Bhelens in her life, and certainly not one in her bed.

What did that leave? Warrior caste, maybe? She'd kicked their asses before she left Orzammar. Hell, she'd marry Leske and let him take his own concubines just to get her best friend out of the dust—if that were an option, the sodding idiot. It doesn't have to be a dwarf, does it? Zevran would flourish in this atmosphere. He sent messages from his travels often, so she could get a proposal to him without much trouble...

And then she'd have to have a big ceremony for the marriage, and she'd need to invite everyone she knew, even Alistair. Especially Alistair; it'd be an insult if she didn't invite the King of Ferelden and fellow Grey Warden to her wedding. Which would be fantastic, because her friendship with Zevran was the only time Alistair had ever really showed any jealousy.

Not that it wasn't undeserved: she had even slept with Zevran before Alistiar, while she was already in a relationship with Alistair. It didn't occur to her until after the fact (ignorant of how surfacers court as she was) that what she had done may have hurt him, and that he might not have even known about the sex. He may have just been acting on the assumption that she was about to have sex with Zevran and could break up with the virgin with cold feet when she found a more willing partner.

She never discussed it more thoroughly with Alistair. With the Blight and the Landsmeet looming, it didn't seem wise to pick at wounds that may or may not be healing when either of them could be stuck with an arrow to the heart or a Genlock axe to the skull tomorrow, and he seemed happy enough when she assured him that the assassin didn't steal away her heart and offered a kiss as proof.

Wouldn't that be something? She laughed to herself. The men likely thought she was amused at the blood-spatter she made of the emissary she'd just slain. I'd hate to see his face if I found a spouse faster than he did, especially when he nearly broke up with me over the idea of marriage before. And if it ended up being Zevran I married to... Stone, forget about breaking up with me; he'd kill me this time! She chuckled again, and another darkspawn fell. Well, he couldn't hire Zev to do it, at least.

The last fell, but there was still a buzz in the back of her head. Strange. The others relaxed, but tensed up as bowstrings when they saw her still watching.

Bah, my head's just messing with me, she thought. The feeling had a vibration to it that she could describe in one of two ways: a large deposit of raw gypsum, or Alistair. There are darkspawn corpses everywhere and I'm sure a vein of the damn crystal somewhere near by.

"Dye! There you are!" his breathless voice called from behind.

She nearly jumped straight out of her skin.

There was the King of Ferelden himself, wearing some fine noble caste armor running up with a school boy's particular glee, and Vartag scrambling shortly after. "Surprised to see me?"

"You have no idea. What are you doing here?"

"Sodding Grey Wardens!" Vartag called after. "He stumbles through like an overtall lout most the journey, and just when I was about to suggest we stop for the night, he breaks out into a run and ducks through the crannies and climbs about like he was part spider! I nearly fell into a crevice of gravel trying to keep up. Why couldn't you move like that the whole way?"

"Well, I couldn't feel the darkspawn and my fellow Grey Warden until now. A shame we missed the fight, though." He looked around at the corpses, even nudging one aside with his foot to look over her handiwork. "Making quick work of them as usual, I see. No wonder it was so hard catching up."

"You know me, never happy unless I'm killing things. But what are you doing here?"

"Waiting on passage to Kirkwall. Eamon is in Highever securing a ship, and I had thought, since Orzammar was so near by..."

"Orzammar isn't near Highever! And why didn't you leave straight from Denerim?"

It wasn't possible for Alistair to sneak a kiss from her. He was far too tall and she would be able to see his intentions from a mile away. Still, he surprised her somehow with his lips on hers, his tongue sliding between, and for the first time in a while, she felt her own body flush up and down from the contact.

How was Mr. But-What-About-Our-Audience just doing that? Here? In front of an audience?

When it ended, he didn't pull away and stayed in his crouch she just realized he'd stooped into. "I missed you," he purred softly, and her hair nearly stood straight on her head for the shocks running through her spine.

What are you doing?! Trying to stop my heart dead? "I... missed you, too?"

He smiled and straightened from her, but one of his large hands kept its grasp on her shoulder and showed no intention of leaving. The other men in the reacted each their own way; some bristled, some coughed and looked away sheepishly. She noticed Vartag was of the first set.

"So! We have some darkspawn to eradicate as usual, right? Think you can lead the way, dear Paragon of mine, for old times sake?"

She rose a brow at him. If this is how he wants to play... "So you can find guidance in my 'swaying hips', your highness?"

His jaw dropped. The whole party had long assumed she didn't listen to their prattle as they traveled, and she was glad to finally tease him like he was her.

But then he recovered far too quickly and smiled. "You may not be able to sway them at all when I get through with you."

She swallowed.