Ferelden was turning out to be slightly too chilly and humid to be anything other than irritatingly miserable, according to the atmospheric sensors in Elissa's suit. She was grateful they had been ordered to keep their suits environmentally sealed until it could be confirmed that some airborne factor wasn't at play here; this type of weather gave her headaches. At least it wasn't naturally inhospitable, though she considered this but a small blessing.
"This is Alpha Squad, we have a visual on the outskirts of Denerim," the voice of Captain Cailan came over the radio. He had refused to remain behind with the crew of the River Dane and so had taken a team of marines to look for survivors in the colony's capital city. "Everything looks quiet so far."
"Roger that, Alpha Squad," answered Duncan's voice. "Finding and safely retrieving the colonists remains the top priority but keep your guard up until we know what's going on here."
'Right,' Elissa frowned to herself. 'Focus.'
"Echo Squad is on approach to the central environmental observation station, ETA five minutes out," Alistair reported into his comm.
The four of them were trekking through the not-quite swamps of Ferelden's lowlands surrounding Lothering. Thus far they had seen nothing unusual in the wilds, and that was perhaps the most worrying thing of all: they had, in fact, seen no signs of any life, be it local wildlife or not. The air was muffled with a heavy, oppressive silence, devoid of any of the normal sounds of nature, the plants all seemed to share the same unhealthy grey-brown color palette, and a thin ghosting of sluggish mist twined around their ankles just to make it that much easier to stumble over the undergrowth. The 'facility' they were looking for was in plain view ahead, though from the outside it looked to be little more than a glorified tool shed with a large satellite dish haphazardly stuck on its roof sitting atop of a half-hearted hill in the middle of an almost-swamp.
"Echo, this is Charlie. We've entered Lothering's perimeter and see no signs of the colonists or any bodies, but there's this strange algae-like black substance growing all over the walls," said Gregor, the veteran N7 with the surprisingly bushy beard who had been tasked with leading the small but heavily-armed Charlie Squad. "I've never seen anything quite like it. Is there anything similar at your position, Echo?"
Alistair went over to inspect the nearest tree and made a curious humming sound. "Affirmative, Charlie. It's all over the trunks of the trees here, though only near the ground."
"Here in Denerim as well, though not very abundant," Captain Cailan interjected. "I assumed it was an oil spill at first but there are little splotches all over. Do you think it's some native moss?"
"Never heard of a moss that looks this slick but I suppose it's possible. Delta, you're the science guys: what is this stuff?"
"We've taken samples for analysis, Charlie."
"We've got samples," Gregor mocked. "Good for you, Delta. We'll just keep looking for those missing colonists, then. Charlie out."
"I told you it could be some alien bacteria," muttered Jory under his breath.
"Technically, moss is a plant," Alistair corrected helpfully while Daveth snickered quietly to himself.
"Easy," Elissa said warningly. They were approaching the observation outpost. Elissa and Jory took their positions on either side of the entrance while Alistair and Daveth quickly scouted the perimeter of the building. When they returned and gave the all-clear, Elissa nodded to Daveth. "Any unusual readings?"
Daveth ran a brief scan of the area with his Omni-Tool and checked the results. "Nothing out of line with what we've seen so far and I'm not detecting any life signs or heat signals inside."
Elissa nodded once more, gave a swift countdown, then kicked the door open and stormed inside, gun drawn and ready for anything. The rest of her squad followed shortly, weapons at the ready.
The interior of the listening post was dark and mostly empty, save for the gentle hum of the computers stacked along one wall. Elissa released the deep breath she'd taken and holstered her gun, wandering over to look at one of the user terminals in front of the dozens of screens displaying readouts from the various sensors scattered around the colony: the basic thermal map, weather patterns, sonar, gaseous chemical densities, seismograph, and easily a dozen others that she didn't recognize. She poked a bit at the terminal but had no idea what she ought to be looking for.
"Daveth, can you pull up the logs and find out what happened here?" she asked.
Daveth had been running diagnostics on the hardware with his Omni-Tool, but at her request he shrugged and slid into the seat at the second terminal. "You got it, Boss. Everything here seems to be in working order, so if there is a problem here it'll probably be on the sensors' end."
Jory raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "If there's a problem here? So this is your idea of a problem-free colony, is it?"
Daveth wiggled his own eyebrows ridiculously. "Your idea of a simple killer bacteria no longer reassuring to you, Soldier?"
They continued to squabble harmlessly but Elissa managed to tune them out by turning her attention back to the console she was sitting in front of. Soon enough she came across what appeared to be the option to switch to the thermal sensor's live-feed on one of the large screens. She hadn't even realized they were looking at recorded data. She tried to switch the feeds and was rewarded with an 'invalid pathway' error for her trouble.
She felt a presence behind her and spun around hurriedly, but it was only Alistair frowning at the screens over her shoulder. "This place is spooky, isn't it?"
"Sure," she replied neutrally, turning back to the console. "Spooky is exactly the word I would use to describe it. If I were five."
He rolled his eyes dramatically but smiled all the same. "Right, sorry, I was going to say 'subtly terrifying beyond all reason' but I was worried you'd think me a coward." His expression darkened then. "Do you really think we'll find anyone alive?"
"We have to try. Those people are counting on us to come looking for them," Elissa said grimly. She managed to find her way to a different sensor and attempted to turn on its feed but the VI sent her the same 'invalid pathway' error as before. "Did you find anything interesting?"
"There's nothing here," he shrugged. "There are no signs of struggle, no signs of sudden abandonment, nothing. Well, there's a coffee stain on the floor over there but I assumed that was somewhat normal for offices."
"Is the stain fresh?"
"If by 'fresh' you mean 'within the past fifteen minutes' then no, it is not. Anything more precise than that is sadly beyond my area of expertise."
The third sensor she tried to activate sent her the same error and she slapped the desk in frustration. "I don't know why I expected there to be anything helpful here."
"Let me have a look." That was the only warning he gave her before he leaned over her shoulder to get a proper look at the console. Elissa crammed herself as tightly as she could manage against the opposite arm of the chair, her expression surprisingly similar to that of a cornered animal at his sudden invasion of her personal space. Alistair didn't seem to notice her discomfort, frowning thoughtfully at the terminal. "This is strange. There doesn't seem to be anything the matter with the system here. I'm not sure why it's giving us errors." He finally glanced back to her and his expression immediately changed to one of utter confusion. "What?"
"Nothing," Elissa said far too quickly.
"I've got full access now," Daveth announced as Alistair stepped back to begin obsessively inspecting his armor to ensure it hadn't spontaneously turned purple or anything else equally ridiculous. "The user logs aren't showing anything unusual; this place wasn't exactly the hub of village activity, you know, so it's possible no one was actually on duty here when whatever happened, well, happened."
"Can you pull up the final moments from the other sensors?" Elissa asked.
"Yup." The images on the screens flickered and changed until each showed a different version of roughly the same area. "These are all the feeds from Lothering and the surrounding wilds. It may not be an exciting job but they certainly were thorough, weren't they?"
He pressed play and immediately the archived footage began wavering gently to indicate the passage of time. One screen abruptly cut to static within moments, but the rest precisely mimicked the recording they had been shown back on the ship: empty stillness followed by a sudden spot of activity that rapidly multiplied until it consumed the entire screen before swarming out of the range of the sensors and leaving behind the same empty void. One by one the recordings died until they were left staring at a wall of useless white noise.
"It's a technical failure," Jory insisted after an uncomfortable pause. His voice was frightened and unsteady. "It has to be. There's something wrong with these computers."
"There's nothing wrong with the computers here," Daveth corrected numbly.
"Th-then that strange moss must have messed with the sensors!" said Jory wildly. "The moss must have ruined the sensors," he repeated desperately. "There's nothing else it could be."
"Bacteria," supplied Alistair quietly, but the joke was without heart or enthusiasm. "Which one of these was the one that cut out first?"
"Seismograph," Daveth answered after a brief check.
"Hmm. Can you pull up the live feed for any of these sensors?" Elissa requested.
Daveth tapped away at the terminal for a brief moment. "Nope. It's giving me a connection error, like the sensors aren't even there any longer."
"What about the ones in other areas of the colony?"
"Let me check. Nope, all equally dead."
Elissa scowled. "Is there a map of where the sensors are located out there?" He nodded and sent a copy to her Omni-Tool. "Good, thanks. Can you send the rest of this to Delta Squad?" He nodded again, so she opened up her comm. "Command, the observation outpost is a dead end. We're sending Delta the data for analysis, but it all looks like different versions of the recording we saw on the ship."
"Roger, Echo, we'll see if we can get anything useful from it," the Delta leader replied.
"The computers think there's something wrong with the sensors," Elissa continued. "There's one not too far east of here in the wilds; we're going to go have a look at it and see if we can figure out why."
"Tread carefully, Echo. We're starting to see signs of struggle here in Lothering proper," said Gregor. "There's blood stains, some broken property, and a whole lot more of that black stuff, but no bodies yet. Something very nasty happened here; watch your backs."
"Appreciate the heads-up, Charlie. Try not to do anything stupid yourselves," said Alistair.
"No promises," Gregor chuckled. The comm went quiet once more.
Elissa studied the map on her Omni-Tool intently for a moment. Once she was certain she had a decent mental image of the area, she gave a determined nod and marched out of the observation shed and back into the regrettably swampy plains, confident that her squad would follow. They did, and the four of them spent the next few minutes walking in silence.
Jory cleared his throat nervously. "Are we sure we're heading in the right direction?"
Alistair checked the map on his Omni-Tool. "We ought to see it any moment now. Er. What exactly are we supposed to be looking for, again?"
A moment of awkward silence took hold of the group.
"It'll be small," Daveth offered cheerily. "Standard design typically looks like a hockey puck on a tent peg, about like this," he gestured briefly to indicate something roughly the size of a large fruit.
"A hockey puck? Tent peg?" Alistair repeated, amused.
"I think I see it!" Elissa pointed ahead to a hillock that appeared to have recently suffered a mudslide. The watery sunlight managed to break through the unusual mist that covered the ground and something metallic glinted amid the dirt and rocks. She hurried toward it.
Daveth's Omni-Tool made a soft pinging sound as some alarm or another was triggered. "Did anyone else feel that?" he asked uneasily.
Alistair made as if to reply, but Elissa never heard what he was planning on saying. She'd been within arms reach of her goal when the world gave a massive lurch and the ground under her feet crumbled away into nothing. She couldn't stop the shriek of horror that escaped her as she fell and then kept on falling; it must have been the deepest sinkhole she'd ever heard of, a small detached part of her mind thought as she looked up and saw the pale light of the sky rapidly retreating and realized that the collapse had also claimed all three of her companions. In her terror, the warm rush of her biotic abilities flared to life, the barely understood power she'd been born with automatically awakening in response to her fear and encasing her whole body in a hazy, unfocused blue surge. The next few heartbeats felt like a miniature eternity as the strength of her unchanneled power coupled with her sheer desperation to fill her with a wild, all-consuming thought. I can still make it! If she moved now, in this moment of perfect, slow-motion focus, if she allowed the biotic-fueled jump that she had trained so hard to control to carry her from one point to another, she could still reach the surface, far away as it seemed now. She could still…
Elissa couldn't risk hitting any of her squad members in the crossfire of a panicked biotic charge. She swung her gaze downwards as she fell, swallowing the fright the seemingly endless darkness stirred in her, and focused her biotics on forming a protective barrier around her body and attempting to slow or cushion their fall. It didn't feel like much, but she hoped it would make a difference.
She collided with the wall of the pit that had swallowed them in a bone-jarring impact. Though her armor and barriers absorbed the brunt of the punishment, it still forced the air from her lungs and left her head ringing painfully. Her uncontrollable momentum continued to carry her downwards in a helpless tumble, and she realized that the pit had transitioned into a steeply inclining tunnel. She tried to scrabble to grab onto anything which could have slowed down her descent, but it was all moving so quickly and she was very disoriented.
Just as the tunnel was finally beginning to even out, there was a loud crack! followed by a burst of pain as she was slammed against something rock hard, at which point Elissa Cousland's world mercifully faded to black.
" – ur status, Echo? I repeat, you have dropped off our maps, Echo Squad. Please respond."
The voice sounded tiny and distant yet was obnoxiously persistent, a gentle buzzing behind her ear that refused to allow her any rest. It was also familiar somehow, but her head was ringing too loudly to try and figure out why. Groggily, Elissa forced her eyes open.
It was dark. Frighteningly, oppressively dark. For a terrible moment she couldn't tell the difference between having her eyes open or closed until a flashing warning on her helmet's heads-up display helped to orient her.
"What is your situation, Echo Squad?" asked the voice in her ear. Duncan, she thought numbly. "If you are able, please respond."
"I'm here," she gasped weakly into the darkness. Then she remembered that she had to turn her radio on if she wanted him to hear her. It took a monumental amount of effort, but she managed to drag both her arms in front of her face enough to use her Omni-Tool. The warm golden glow as it flickered to life around her hand had never been so welcoming, so she activated its flashlight feature as well for good measure before opening up the radio link. "I'm here," she repeated, a bit more steady now.
"Charlie has been dispatched to your last coordinates," Duncan said briskly. "What is your current status, Echo?"
Elissa began blearily taking stock of her surroundings. She'd come to a stop in what looked like a natural cavern about the size of an average apartment bedroom. She pushed herself into a sitting position from the pile of pebbles and dust she'd been lying in with a miserable groan but was surprised to realize she had no major injuries; she felt like a giant ball of hurt, she was sure she was covered from head to toe in vicious bruises, and her head was still spinning uncontrollably but there would be no lasting damage. Apparently her boosted barriers and fancy armor had done their jobs quite well.
"The ground's unstable here," she wheezed out as she struggled to her feet. "There was some kind of major collapse; it was a tunnel or a cavern or something, I don't know, but it's deep. I… I don't know where the others are," she admitted, swallowing dryly. "I think they're somewhere down here too but I don't know."
Dead static was the only reply the radio offered her. She wondered if anyone had even heard her transmission.
She couldn't stay here. Elissa swung in a slow circle, the light from her own equipment the only method of keeping the dark at bay as her flashlight quickly revealed every corner of the limited space she found herself in. There was nothing particularly useful or interesting to see; for a heart-stopping moment she didn't even see the opening she had fallen through and feared it had collapsed as well. On the second glance around she saw it, a gap in the wall about shoulder-height off the ground that was a foot tall and some three-odd feet wide. She focused her flashlight into the gap and craned her neck to get as good a look as she could: it would be a tight squeeze at first but after a few feet it seemed to open up into a larger space. Not that she had much of choice, seeing that there were no other ways in or out of this pit.
With a stiff moan as her joints protested the activity, Elissa unhooked her shotgun from its secure place on her back, hoisted it into the small space before her so it wouldn't get her wedged between the rocks and awkwardly scrabbled up into the gap. It was tight and she had to wiggle uncomfortably to make any sort of progress but after a few tense moments the tunnel blessedly opened up into a much larger space. She spent a few moments on her knees catching her breath before securing her shotgun in its place once more and using her flashlight to get a better look around.
This most likely was the tunnel the sinkhole had collapsed into. She must have hit the side at a remarkably precise angle and been knocked into the tiny crevice she'd woken up in. The tunnel was surprisingly large – her flashlight barely reached the ceiling – and suspiciously smooth to have been completely natural. It was also completely empty.
She switched her suit to the external speakers as well as the closed Alliance radio signals and cleared her throat. "Hello?" she called softly, suddenly feeling very small and alone in the dark.
Several long minutes passed where the only sound she heard was that of her own breathing. She forced herself back to her feet. The slope of the ground was quite steep so at least there was no question as to which direction she had fallen from. Figuring she had to start somewhere, Elissa turned and began to wearily trudge upwards, hoping she could at least find a stronger comm signal closer to the surface.
Something clattered in the dark behind her, the sound oddly amplified and exaggerated as it reverberated menacingly off the stone walls. Elissa had her pistol drawn and spun around to face it in a heartbeat but couldn't see anything over the light of her flashlight. She briefly wondered if she ought to turn it off but couldn't bear the thought of being trapped in the all-consuming darkness again with whatever was making that noise.
The sound was growing louder now, a scrabbling, uneven sound that was drawing nearer with each passing moment. Elissa kept her flashlight on and hunkered down as near to the tunnel wall as she could get, idly wishing there was some form of cover to duck behind. There wasn't enough time to crawl back into her crevice before whatever was making those noises was upon her, and even if there was, she couldn't quite place where the small entrance gap was amid all the rock and shadows. So she crouched down, making herself as small a target as she could, took careful aim with her pistol at the approaching noises, and waited until she could see the hulking outline of something clearly large approaching from the depths of the tunnel before she pulled the trigger.
Her shot was deflected harmlessly by Alistair's shields, which did absolutely nothing to stop him from looking completely horrified by it. "You shot me!" he protested incredulously. "I was coming to look for you and you shot me!"
"Alistair! I'm so sorry!" Elissa squeaked. She holstered her pistol and hurried over to him. "I didn't mean… Why didn't you say it was you?"
"Most likely for the same reason you didn't ask who I was before you shot me!" Alistair scowled, irritably rubbing at the shoulder her shot had bluntly impacted. He looked disoriented and was moving stiffly but otherwise seemed no worse off than she was. "I had no idea if it was actually you or not!"
Elissa was quite frankly so relieved to see him that for a moment she couldn't speak. As soon as she reached him, she hugged him tightly, their armor clashing uncomfortably as she was momentarily overwhelmed with how grateful she was that she didn't have to be alone in this pressing darkness. "I really am sorry I shot you," she mumbled into his chest. Why was he so tall? "It won't happen again, I swear."
He didn't seem to know how to respond to this. He cleared his throat uneasily and gave her an awkward pat on the back. "Yeah, well, everyone gets one. At least you got the urge to shoot me out of your system so the desire for violence won't create any unnecessary tension for the team."
She pulled away with a soft chuckle before looking expectantly behind him. "Where are the others?"
"This tunnel opens up into a huge cavern a bit further down," Alistair explained, obviously eager to look anywhere but at her. "Daveth's fine, but I think Jory broke a few ribs so they're both hunkered down back there until the Medi-Gel fully kicks in. I thought I heard a noise up here and I didn't know where you were, so…" He trailed off with a shrug. "How did you end up back here, anyway?"
"I was knocked into some small branch-off on the way down somehow. How deep does this thing go?"
"Too deep. None of our radios work; have you been able to get a signal to the rest of the Wardens?"
"I heard Duncan say Charlie Squad is looking for us. I tried to send them a warning but I'm not sure if it went through or not and the line's been dead since. I had hoped that if I got a bit closer to the surface the signal would have a better chance."
Alistair nodded. "That's a good plan. We need to let Duncan and the Captain know about this."
"Will Jory and Daveth be alright on their own?" Elissa frowned.
"Will we?" Alistair asked in return.
Elissa didn't really have an answer for him.
They began the trudge up the tunnel in silence. It was slow going; the ground was uneven and steep, they were both tired and sore, and the shadows cast by their flashlights played confusing tricks on the eye. They continued without conversation, concentrating on their footing, and in the darkness surrounding them it was difficult to gauge how much time had passed.
"Wait," gasped Elissa suddenly. "Turn off your light for a moment."
Alistair looked at her as if she had grown a second head but didn't argue, dimming his Omni-Tool as she switched off her own. They were rewarded with a faint ghosting of light up ahead that illuminated a bend in the ever-steepening tunnel. Immediately re-energized, the two Grey Wardens hurried to scramble up the slop and towards the light.
It felt like a punch in the gut to finally make it around the corner only to be greeted by an incline so abrupt it may as well have been completely vertical. The weak Ferelden sunlight was far, far above them and cruelly out of reach.
Alistair sighed. "Well, at least we found where we came in," he said dully. "I still can't raise anyone else from here. Is your comm working any better?" She didn't respond, still staring numbly at the spot of light high above their heads. "Elissa," Alistair pressed gently, finally succeeding in grabbing her attention. "Does your comm work here?"
She tried. It didn't. They shared a moment of frustrated silence.
"There's another way out of here," Elissa decided suddenly. "This tunnel has to go somewhere. You said it opens up into a large cave?"
"Yes, but –"
"This all goes somewhere, Alistair, and wherever that is has another way out," she insisted hotly, suddenly quite angry. This stupid cave-in was not going to beat her. She began a carefully controlled slide back down into the darkness. "Come on, we should get back to the others and see if they've found anything."
"Wait a minute…!"
"Alistair," Elissa interrupted, not even glancing back to see if he was going to follow her, "shut up and come on."
He shut up and followed her down the tunnel.
Alistair hadn't been exaggerating when he'd called the system of caverns the tunnel opened into 'huge'. The empty space extended beyond the range of her flashlight but she could tell that it continued to stagger ever downwards in great, uneven shelves. She could see a speck of golden light wavering around far below, but quickly realized it was Daveth's drone scouting ahead. What immediately drew her attention were her other two squadmates huddled against a pile of rubble near the wall of the cave. They were both sitting, but Daveth immediately leapt to his feet as soon as they announced their presence and Jory hobbled over to join them shortly. Relieved greetings were exchanged and a brief summaries of discoveries were given.
"The way I see it, we need to get out of here but we won't be going back up the way we came in," Elissa said with a look of intense determination. "These caves weren't on any of our maps but it's obvious they go somewhere, and I'm willing to bet my life that somewhere eventually leads to a way out. Daveth, I saw your drone exploring; did it show any kind of opening or path to more tunnels?"
"It did," Daveth agreed, carefully neutral, "but they only seem to lead further down."
"I say we follow them," said Elissa. "It's our duty to investigate this further anyway, and we're not doing ourselves any good simply sitting here and hoping that Charlie Squad can figure out what happened, so –"
"Since when did stumbling about in the dark without backup become our duty?" Jory demanded. He was still clutching his injured side but the Medi-Gel seemed to have dulled the pain enough to allow him to function relatively normally.
"Something happened to the colonists here, something the Alliance has no record of ever happening before," Elissa reminded him pointedly. "These tunnels are not in any of the data about Ferelden we've seen. There has to be some connection there, and we need to find out what it is."
"What we need to do is wait for help to arrive," protested Jory. "Surely Charlie Squad can be expected to notice the gaping hole in the ground and connect the dots? We ought to stay put until they arrive."
"Charlie isn't going to jump down the same hole we fell into," Alistair pointed out. "They're going to look for a safer entrance as well. For all we know, exploring these tunnels could lead us to them all the sooner. Frankly, it also might lead to us being horribly lost forever, but I'd place the odds at about fifty-fifty."
Elissa squared her shoulders and said in the most confidence-inspiring voice she could manage, "We are getting out of this mess, and the best option at this moment is to keep moving."
She spun away from the group and marched off to try and see the safest path down the haphazard layers of rock. It was a warm relief when Alistair followed after her straight away, followed by Daveth, and then finally the wounded Jory. At the bottom of the chamber was a jagged, gaping passageway that only just managed to avoid looking completely like some terrifying beast about to swallow them whole, even with Daveth's little drone floating about looking ridiculous and bright, but Elissa was well past the point of being intimidated by rocks. She bared her teeth at the unnerving shadows the passage cast and tromped onwards as if to spite the very idea that she'd ever been nervous in these caves.
This section of rock gave off the impression that it had formed much more naturally, unlike the neatly polished tunnel from before, yet it soon gave way to what Elissa could only describe as an underground canyon. The sense of scale produced by the empty void they were facing was beyond the scale of anything she had expected to find. The sudden drop-off before them could have lead straight to Hell for how far down it went, and the illusion wasn't hurt by the distant molten glow of open lava flows spider-webbing their way across the sheer walls. There were several meters of ledge on their side of the canyon which made walking along the edge in either direction a viable option, and she could dimly see that across the kilometer wide gap there were more tunnels and paths.
Behind her, Jory snorted derisively and gently eased himself to the ground. "What are you doing?" Elissa asked, turning to face him.
"It's obvious we won't be making any true progress soon and I would like some rest," he told her.
"If you think for one moment that I'm going to let a little thing like this get in my way," Elissa began warningly.
"Don't act as if every bloody thing hasn't gone wrong with this mission from the start!" Jory cut her off. "Perhaps this place is simply cursed, the colonists were dragged away by demons into oblivion, and we'll never –"
His words died in his throat as a soft chuckling echoed throughout the cavern. They instantly pressed together, weapons drawn and in a defensive formation, but in the gloom of the underground it was impossible to tell from which direction the darkly foreboding sound was coming from.
"Who's there?" Elissa shouted into the darkness, her own voice melding with the echoes from the canyon to create sounds she would have quite happily lived her entire life never imagining could happen. She forced her expression to remain calm and her grip on her pistol steady as she made slow, careful sweeps with her flashlight, trying to identify –
There. A pair of unfamiliar amber eyes stared back at her from the shadows. The silhouette of a woman became quite clear on a small ledge above their heads on the far side of the canyon. She didn't appear to be carrying any weapons and wasn't wearing any armor, but a dark cloth hood covered much of her face.
Elissa sighed but didn't lower her gun. "We're with the Alliance Navy," she announced clearly and with what she hoped was confidence. "An automated distress signal was sent from the colony's capital and we've been sent to provide the colonists with any assistance necessary. Are you a resident here?"
"I do indeed make my home here, though not as one of your lost colonists," the woman responded eloquently. She stepped forward into the range of their flashlights and made to lower her hood. "If anyone is lost here, it is you, dear Alliance soldiers. Please do tell what you expect to find worthy of assistance here in the void?"
An asari, Elissa realized, lowering his pistol a fraction in surprise. The alien woman was beautiful in a distinctly aloof sort of way. In the gloom of the underground, her skin, normally a soft bluish to purplish shade in proper light, now looked a disquieting shade of grey. Elissa visually scanned her for military or mercenary logos but found nothing telling. In fact, much of the asari's clothing had an air that one couldn't help but think suggested she had crafted it all herself. Elissa much preferred to focus on her face, though, as she seemed to be wearing significantly less, er, upper torso coverage than Elissa had been trained to expect from anyone who had the forethought to wear a hood which was still concealing most of her head. The asari's face gave her an almost ethereal air in this lighting, but her eyes were by far the strongest draw for attention: bright golden irises accentuated perfectly by the purple designs across her eyelids, forehead area, and upper cheek below the lower lids. None of this was helped at all, however, by her curious, patronizing sort-of sneer as she inspected them in turn while waiting for an answer.
"We suspect these tunnels have something to do with the colonists' disappearance and we intend to find them," Elissa said firmly.
"You shouldn't give her any info; she could be a mercenary who was involved in whatever happened here," Daveth muttered nervously behind Elissa's shoulder. "The Eclipse have a huge presence in the Terminus Systems but it's not unheard of for them to harass our colonies here on the edge of the Traverse."
"A mercenary, you say?" The asari seemed more amused by the accusation than anything else. "How unimaginative. And terribly illogical, I might add: would a mercenary group not profit more from doing business with living, paying colonists than simply causing them all to vanish? Even if they were hired by some unknown third party to do the deed, 'convincing' a colony of this size to so perfectly disappear is no insignificant accomplishment. A job of this magnitude would surely earn a signature of some sort. A calling card to future potential employers, if you will. There is none of that here," she waved her hand dismissively.
"Even so, we have no way of knowing you weren't involved with this somehow," Alistair snapped back with an uncharacteristic venom. It seemed he was more than willing to place all of the anger and frustration of this terrible day squarely on the shoulders of this vaguely intimidating unknown factor. "We have no reason to believe anything you say is anything more than some elaborate trap."
Elissa could see this was getting them nowhere. Her team was tired, on-edge, and understandably frightened and the asari's expression was growing more condescending and unimpressed by the second. She grit her teeth quietly and steeled herself to bet everything on a single impulse. "If she wanted us dead she would have killed us while we were fumbling around in the dark," she said, holstering her gun stiffly. Ignoring the shocked expressions from her squad, she focused everything she had on willing the asari to give her a straight answer. "We told you our purpose, so tell us: if you're not a colonist and you're not responsible for what happened here, then who are you?"
Immediately those amber eyes were focused solely on her, but now the asari's expression had shifted back towards a neutral curiosity. "A proper exchange, how surprising," she mused, almost smiling. "An observer, an outsider, a native, any of these words are appropriate. You may address me as Morrigan."
"Morrigan," Elissa nodded slowly. "My name is Elissa. This is Alistair, Daveth, and Jory," she said, pointing to each of them in turn.
"Don't give her our names," Alistair hissed desperately in her ear.
"I see," Morrigan said impassively, though now she seemed mostly amused. "In the end, it matters little what we call each other, for I know what you truly are: you are as lost here in this darkness as your colonists are to the world above."
"The world above? Are you saying they're down here somewhere?" Elissa pressed urgently.
"I am saying that they are beyond your reach or assistance," Morrigan deadpanned, but her golden gaze lingered meaningfully on the dark canyon stretched between them.
"Over two thousand innocent people are missing!" Alistair declared angrily. He'd followed Elissa's example and lowered his gun but had not holstered it. "Civilians, families, their children! If you know anything about what happened to them, you are obligated to tell us what!"
"I am obligated to do nothing!" replied Morrigan dangerously. "Least of all exchange asinine gossip with idiotic soldiers who can't find their way out of the dark! You!" She pointed suddenly at Elissa. "I will not deal with that one further. Contain the oaf if you wish to converse, otherwise resume your blind wandering."
Elissa pressed her mouth into a displeased line but managed to withhold any snappy response. She turned to Alistair with an apologetic expression and a placating gesture and silently mouthed 'We need her help.' He looked furious, though most of his anger was still obviously directed at the disliked asari, but to her immense gratitude he nodded irritably and stepped away from the group, turning his back to them with his arms crossed in a petulant sulk. Elissa turned back to Morrigan. "If you didn't come to talk about the colonists, why did you reveal yourself at all?" she asked.
"These caverns weave under thousands of miles of natural landscape; navigating them is impossible for an ill-prepared tourist," Morrigan replied dismissively. She had her arms crossed loosely over her chest and was staring off into the distance as if she'd grown bored with this whole encounter, then suddenly waved her hand flippantly. "This idle chatter accomplishes nothing. I will now proceed towards a surface exit; you may follow, if it pleases you."
With that she hopped from her narrow perch and nimbly began to make her way along an improvised path across the far rim of the canyon. After a brief exchange of stunned expressions, Echo Squad followed her lead. Morrigan moved quickly with a grace that reminded Elissa unnervingly of a large, predatory cat, but while she always remained a dim outline in the gloom on the far side of the chamber, she never completely left their range of vision. Although Elissa was sure they made an uncoordinated spectacle of themselves trying to keep pace with her, they always had a clear directional goal to follow.
"I don't trust her," Alistair muttered darkly as he plodded along beside her.
Elissa didn't particularly blame him for feeling that way, but she was just about as tired and angry with this situation as the rest of them at this point. "Well, it's a good thing I'm not asking you to sleep with her, then, isn't it?" she snapped.
He didn't have a response for that.
Eventually they made their way out of the immense cavern with the unfathomably gaping chasm and found themselves in several more natural feeling caves with multiple branch offs. It was a bit harder keeping up with Morrigan in these more confined, twisting spaces, but she always made just enough noise to let them know which of the many forks she had turned down. After many identical turns that Elissa didn't honestly expect she could retrace, they entered another cave much like the ones before it to find Morrigan standing next to one of the branching tunnels.
"I expect even you need no further hand-holding to follow a straight line," she said dully. "I will take my leave here."
"I thought you were coming to the surface as well," said Alistair suspiciously.
"My words were that I was heading towards a surface exit, not that I would take it myself," she sneered back.
Elissa hurried to shush him before he could carry the argument further. "Thank you, Morrigan, for helping us. We would still be in dire trouble if it wasn't for you."
"Quite so," Morrigan tossed her head dismissively.
Elissa waited until the other three had filed into the upwards-slanting tunnel before she stopped beside the asari. "I don't suppose I could convince you to provide the Alliance with an interview…?"
"Never," came the curt reply. Elissa nodded reluctantly and had made her way several meters into the tunnel herself when Morrigan cleared her throat pointedly to get her attention once more. "A word to the wise: the heart of this incident is both far darker and much closer than your Alliance is prepared to accept."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Elissa asked, turning back to face her.
"What indeed?" mused the asari's voice mysteriously, but Morrigan herself had melted back into the darkness as surely as if she had never existed.
"Elissa!" Alistair's voice echoed down to her. "You won't believe this."
She hurried up the tunnel and stumbled into blessed, warm sunlight. She took a moment to catch her breath gratefully, then glanced questioningly to Alistair. The tunnel had let out in between two hills, the entrance hidden by foliage until you were nearly upon it. Alistair trotted up to the crest of the smaller of the two hills and gestured below. Elissa followed suit and found herself squinting in disbelief at what she saw laid out in front of them.
They were staring at the River Dane's landing spot.
A/N: Not beta'd, so I hope it's readable. I wasn't sold on making Morrigan an asari until I actually got to this chapter. I'm still a little nervous about it but I figured it nailed the whole mysterious mystic vibe a touch better than a human with their ass-over-head knowledge of biotics.