The bits from the Chant of Light are from The Calling. (which is quite good, and highly recommended.) As always, thanks so much for adding me to your notification and fave lists, and especially for the reviews!

The plan was for us to go to Blackmarsh, rescue a hopefully still living Grey Warden, and return to the Keep triumphant. Sure, it was easily on my list of worst places I'd ever been to, and that list included Haven of all places, but I still held to that hope that something would work out as we planned even as we stumbled through waves of darkspawn and blight-infected werewolves. Because normal werewolves aren't bad enough, apparently.

Nathaniel was familiar with the area, and everything he could share was disturbing, in more ways than one. "My father used to tell me stories about Blackmarsh, when I was a child. He said evil magic killed everyone here." Arl Howe couldn't even tell his kids a bedtime story without being creepy? I wish I could have been surprised by that.

What I didn't hope to do in Blackmarsh was discover new, never before seen forms of darkspawn, meet another of those chatty darkspawn bastards, and getting trapped in the fade where we fight several dozen demons. With a dwarf, no less. A dwarf who, upon realizing he was in the fade, proceeded to have a complete breakdown.

I'd always known dwarves couldn't be mages, of course. A lack of connection to the fade, a natural immunity to lyrium, there were tons of theories. I didn't realize dwarves didn't reach the fade even in dreams, though. But, they apparently sleep "like the stone," or so Oghren shouted after we were transported. I managed to calm him down while Anders worked on Nathaniel. He was also disturbed, but not nearly so much since he at least had the same minor connection to the fade all humans shared.

We were in Blackmarsh still, but a strange frozen version of it, twisted and lost in time. After repairing the tears in the Veil we came across a group of spirits. They had gathered around one of the virtuous fade spirits: this one representing Justice, apparently. Standing at the gates to the mansion they screamed at someone called the Baroness. Nathaniel urged me to volunteer our help towards his cause, but Anders was pushing for the opposing side. If the Baroness could do trap the entire town here, she could certainly set us free. But I had to be able to sleep at night, too: I offered to help the spirit. From what I remembered of my Fade studies he could send us back just as easily as the Baroness, with the benefit of not being evil.

"They just said she was an evil, powerful witch," Anders protested. "Do we really want to antagonize her?"

"What are we, Chantry sisters?" I asked him. "I don't want to antagonize her, I want to kill her! Look at what she's done! Justice will help us get out of here."

"All right, that could work. But if I die I'll be very angry with you."

The Baroness was less creepy than I had expected, and far more impressed with herself than anyone who isn't an archdemon deserves to be. She didn't even try to fight us herself; she just summoned a few demons and set the talking darkspawn on us. When he backed down from the fight she killed him herself, using his life force to send us all back to the real world.

"Ancestor's tits, I never want to go back there again," I heard before I could open my eyes.

I sat up, stretching. Even if the way we arrived and returned was strange, I felt like after any other visit to the fade. Nathaniel and Oghren were sitting, looking equally lost and relieved at the same time. Anders seemed unfazed. "Did you meet Valor during your harrowing? I wonder if Justice is related."

"I did. He challenged me to a duel for a staff and I talked him into just giving me one instead. Maybe they're brothers? I don't know if the spirits have siblings, though."

I laughed. "I did the same thing. 'You want to duel me? I'm an unarmed mage half your size, not a warrior! If I could survive a duel with you I wouldn't be asking for your help in the first place.' I think he felt guilty after that."

I climbed to my feet, confirmed all four of us were still alive, and realized our numbers had increased by one.

"Kristoff?"

I was right the first time, of course. Kristoff was very, very dead. This fact didn't prevent him from standing up and speaking, though.

So, we now had an ethereal Fade embodiment of a virtue unhappily trapped in the body of a dead Grey Warden on the team. Huzzah?

Justice didn't say much on the walk from Blackmarsh once he got over his initial shock and accepted my offer to join us. By defeating the darkspawn he believed he would earn vengeance for the slain Warden. I didn't have the heart to explain that "defeating the darkspawn" hadn't happened in the last thousand years, and was unlikely to happen at any point in our lifetimes. At best, Wardens kept them at bay. He watched everything, drinking in scenery like it was water. He had proven to be a remarkable warrior in our fight with the Baroness, so I knew he would come in handy. I guess I would just need to make sure we got him a full coverage helmet when we visited the city.

I had insisted on packing up Kristoff's camp before we left. I didn't know if Justice would actually require sleep, but having a tent for him just in case seemed handy. We managed to take care of some of the small errands people had asked of me on our way to a crevasse where darkspawn had been spotted.

"Maker's breath, it's hot out," I whined as we crossed a wooden bridge, several days out of Blackmarsh and only a couple hours from the area where darkspawn were seen by the hunters. "Are you certain we're still in Ferelden, Nathainel?"

"This is normal for an Amaranthine summer," he assured me before raising a hand to stop us. Gesturing for silence Nathaniel pointed out several shadows behind rocks on the opposite side of the bridge. Bandits would already be tearing towards us. The shadows remained persistently still, but clearly not naturally occurring. I readied my staff and we walked forward slowly.

The attack occurred just as we stepped off the bridge, as I expected. We were outnumbered, but only by a few. Not bandits, they were well armed and clearly trained: all rogues. Not a warrior or mage among them.

"Search the bodies," I said after they were down and Anders had finished healing everyone. "Any clue."

I couldn't find anything but plain weapons and bottles of poison. I saw Anders carry something over to Oghren, though, and went to join them.

"Aye," he muttered. "Sodding nug-humpers."

"What?" Anders held something behind his back, but didn't answer. "Anders, what did you find?"

"You won't like this, Mags," Oghren said.

"I don't like being ambushed, either. Show me." He handed me a dragonbone dagger, directing my attention to the heraldry on the pommel, black wings on red, stylized to resemble eyes. "Andraste's ass, you've got to be kidding me."

"This is going to be bad, right?" Nathaniel walked over, followed by Justice.

I held up the dagger. "Someone's hired the Crows to come after us."

He survived the bodies around us scoffing. "I thought they were supposed to be legendary assassins." Nathaniel seemed both unimpressed and unconcerned. That was better than being nervous, I suppose.

I shrugged. "I guess I always get their B team. Ugh, maybe I should have read that letter," I groaned. "It might have been a warning of some kind."

"Or this is his version of a second letter," Anders theorized.

"I find that highly unlikely, Anders." Zevran was a lot of things, but he would never actually send the Crows on me out of spite. Would he?

"Right. Because by all other accounts he was a pillar of society." I had to admit, Anders made a point. I could always dismiss Zevran's less savory qualities because of his unflappable loyalty to me. Loyalty that wasn't quite as complete as I had imagined, if sneaking off with just a few hasty words on parchment were taken into account. Still, he had never met the man, and I didn't like him assigning Zevran blame because of… what? Some kind of jealousy?

"Says the man who was knee deep in dead templars when we met."

"Funny you bring that up now when you never cared about it before. As though we both don't know you wouldn't do the exact same thing in a heartbeat, Maggie." I had to admit, he made a good point there. It had mattered so little that I'd never even pressed to find out if he really had killed them. Why did I bring that up? Even if this attack wasn't because of, or related to, Zevran I didn't have any reason to defend him.

"I wondered who in Antiva would write you," Nathaniel interrupted, halting our argument. "Can't you read it when we get back to the keep? It may still help." Justice stood on silently. What a fantastic introduction to humanity we would be.

"Not exactly." I blushed. "I got rid of it."

"You tossed a letter away without even opening it?"

"Right into the fireplace. Yes," I answered. His pale eyes went wide with surprise. "I had a… friend who was with the Crows," The explanation was absurdly transparent, but if we were being stalked by assassins I couldn't play coy, and I suspect my squabble with Anders had filled in more than a few of the blanks already. "We didn't part on the best of terms, I assumed the letter was regarding our former relationship. Since I had no interest in reading whatever he had to say I asked Anders to throw it in the fire for me."

"How very symbolic," he teased. That thought hadn't even occurred to me at the time, but it did seem fitting in an obvious Orleasan ballad sort of way. "I didn't think either of you were interested in that level of dramatic subtlety." Nathaniel was smirking a little bit, eyeing both of us in turn. Anders grinned at him.

"I'm just going to start walking this way, towards the darkspawn. You know: the things we kill for a living. When everyone is done gossiping about my romantic history you can catch up to me." Fortunately the subject was dropped, and we made it to the tunnel in the closest thing to silence this group ever managed. That would involve Anders and Oghren teasing each other, and now Nathaniel peppering Justice with questions.

"Oh no! Don't take me back to the tower! I'm far, far too delicate!"

"Will you ever need to switch bodies, Justice?"

"I thought you were being attacked by a wild animal. But it was only your beard."

"Do you do anything besides ponder what is just and unjust?"

Maker, they went on and on. Meet the fabled Grey Wardens, look on in awe as we make off color jokes and discuss possession in far too great of detail. Not that I was any better, I knew that much. If I was going to be Commander of a fighting force, at least it was this band of lunatics. Alistair would be proud. At any rate, it was an improvement over the discussion of my former lovers. I managed to tune them out, walking lead since I could still sense the darkspawn easier than the rest of the group.

Leading us into a tunnel we were confronted by darkspawn dragging off a screaming dwarven woman.

"Maker's breath," I shouted. "Don't let them take her!" Fortunately we were in time, and the woman gasped her thanks to us as she regained her composure. I dropped to one knee so we were on eye level. "Are you all right?" The expression on my face must have explained enough to her. She nodded.

"You were just in time."

Nathaniel and Anders could tell they were missing the subtext to our brief conversation. Oghren pulled the new Wardens aside and explained why no one ever saw female darkspawn. He had been with us in the deep roads, when we killed one of the broodmothers: women so corrupted by the taint that they mutate, becoming nothing more than enormous darkspawn factories of flesh. I should have explained it to them. During the Blight we had a long-standing rule: no women taken alive. Thank the Maker, it had never come up, but I wanted to make sure I would never be turned into one of those… things. That was pretty high on my 'worse than being dead' list.

"Legion of the Dead?" I asked her, noticing the insignia on her armor. She nodded and introduced herself as Sigrun. She told us the entire Legion was lost, the darkspawn had laid a trap for them in an abandoned city. Whatever was going on wasn't isolated, though. The attack on the Keep, the ambusish in Blackmarsh, now this- they were strategizing, and without an archdemon to guide them. The darkspawn shouldn't be able to think on their own, and yet…

"We'll help you," I said.

Her jaw dropped. "You didn't hear the part about it being crawling with darkspawn?"

I shrugged. "Grey Wardens."

"My condolences, then."

I don't know if there is a Veil in the Deep Roads. Sigrun said dwarves believe spirits of the dead return to the stone. If that was the case, perhaps there was so much death in Kal'Hirol that the stone simply couldn't accept any more. Ghostly images walked the halls, forever reenacting their last terrified battles as the city fell to the darkspawn. I stopped to watch each of these scenes, we all did. It seemed fitting that finally, someone would remember them.

Moving through the dead city we encountered occasional groups of darkspawn, but the primary residents seemed to be these faded memories. I found a man, human of all things, in a cage suspended over lava. His voice was tinged with hysteria as he told us he snuck in, treasure hunting. Sigrun and Oghren were both enraged at the thought of stealing from the dwarves. He tried to offer me the treasure in exchange for his freedom. Dark patches were starting to spread above his collar, and across his hands. I opened the cage and slit his throat quickly.

"Maggie!" Nathaniel gasped.

"He was already dead," I told him. "It was a mercy." I pulled up the man's sleeve, displaying the corruption. I was telling the truth, of course, but it didn't make me feel any better.

"Is there no cure?"

"Not one I know of, no. I guess, in the earliest stages, one can undergo the Joining and survive. But he wasn't in the early stages. I could sense the corruption rolling off him."

We went on, fighting golems and darkspawn. Another of the speaking variety was there, from Sigrun's gasp I'd guess she hadn't encountered any before. She barely paused, though, before launching herself at him with both blades.

Anders managed to stumble on a bucket full of pure refined lyrium in the remains of an old workshop. I stared, eyes wide. It was enough to keep us both in lyrium potions for the rest of our lives, and several other mages besides. After confirming we wouldn't be causing an international incident he and I set about filling every empty bottle we had, as well as all of Nathaniel's. Once I emptied a good chunk of our medicinal salves we managed get all of it. "Just think," he said, throwing a conspiratorial arm across my shoulder as we walked, "the Chantry controls the lyrium trade-"

"And now we won't have to go to them for it ever again!" I finished, laughing.

We moved on, entering a room with fleshy growths on the floors and walls. My stomach sank as tentacles began to burst from the ground around us. Dodging them, we entered the main room. Three broodmothers sat below us, in a pit. I doubled over, worried for a moment I would be sick, but the feeling passed. Climbing back to my feet I looked down again and was reminded of a Chant verse Leliana was particularly fond of repeating just before our worst battles. "Maker, though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure. What you have created, no one can tear asunder."

To my surprise, Anders provided the next stanza. "Though all before me is shadow, Yet shall the Maker be my guide. I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond. For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost." He looked over at me, and then gestured to chains holding up a large elaborate light fixture. "Shall we put them out of their misery?"