The Legion of the Dead. Orzammar's first and last line of defense. The dwarves' little, open secret.

They were the first welcome sight in a long while. Nema was impressed.

They were gruff and didn't waste time on pleasantries. On the borders of the fallen fortress of Bownammar the men methodically checked the integrity of their armor and weapons. Some quickly attended to repairs while others passed a wedge of lichen cheese through the ranks so that men could break off pieces with crusts of bread and chew while they waited for the next wave of darkspawn to attack.

This, Nema thought. This was the perfect machine for defeating the Blight. Their armor was a cobbled together mishmash of old and new parts, all in the name of survival, of victory. With their faces masked by garish tattoos, the Legion of the Dead was resolute in their task. They only paused from their vows to return their fallen brethren to the stone.

What kind of leadership, what kind of circumstances did these men endure so that their loyalty was that unwavering? If Nema could learn their practices, she would eagerly apply them to the surface troops.

The man named Kardol was chosen to speak for them. The umber triangles painted over his eye sockets made his eyes look sunken and dead, but there was a certain glint to his actual eyes that told Nema that perhaps the man had possessed a great amount of humor long ago.

"Atrast vala, Grey Warden," he said. "I've never seen one of your kind in the Deep Roads."

He knew who they were? That made Nema smile. "But yet you don't look surprised."

"In the Legion of the Dead, we abandon our lives to be free of fear, free of hopeful blindness. The coming Blight is obvious to us."

Finally. Someone with a sense of the urgency they faced. Unfortunate that they had to first be neck-deep in darkspawn for anyone to take notice. Kardol spared a glance for her party. Wynne busied herself making the dying men more comfortable, Leliana made a mostly unsuccessful attempt at small talk. Oghren stood apart from the Legion out of discomfort, perhaps respect.

Kardol raised an eyebrow. "The surprise is not that you have come, but that you have come in so small a number."

Perhaps Kardol should speak with the Assembly. Or Loghain for that matter. She was so sick of dealing with stagnation and self-possessed fools. She had not expected rational thinking from any creature found out in the Deep Roads.

"What do you want here, Warden?" Kardol asked.

Brusque and to the point. Nema could appreciate that. "I am Nema Surana," she said. "And I am looking for allies."

Kardol appeared less impressed than she. "That's an odd tactic, recruiting from the frontline." He offered a ghost of a smirk and then she could truly see how well his humor had lasted. "The darkspawn pitch their camps in our tunnels between your 'Blights," you know."

Damn him, he was right. It didn't stop the word 'bastard' from ringing in her ears, however.

The more they talked, the more obstinate he became. The most frustrating part was how Nema understood his refusals completely. Kardol wasn't some politician worried about being usurped; he was fighting because his people were dying. While her people were going extinct due to a culture of submission and wombs that readily accepted human seed, his were being lost to politics and sharing land with darkspawn. The elves faced a more insidious death, but she could not fault him for putting his own people before others when she actively did the same.

It still burned that he refused to share the Legion's secrets with her. To die in the eyes of their brothers so they may fight without fear. A powerful motivator to anyone who would believe it. A most suitable way to offer redemption to prisoners that would otherwise be executed on the surface. To say more invited judgment, he told her. Or worse, imitation. Had she been that obvious with her intent? Perhaps Nema had simply not been the first to seek the knowledge.

Kardol bid them good luck then, as they left. He spoke it plainly and in a way that may have sounded patronizing by anyone else. But he was one of the few men who knew what they truly faced and knew just how much luck would be involved for them all to return unscathed.

They crossed the precarious and crumbling bridge into Bownammar as the Legion steadfastly held their line. It was amusing to see Oghren so at odds without a single biting remark on the tip of his tongue. The fortress' massive gates had been sealed by warriors past, but the darkspawn had carved their own entrance into the walls. Nema was greeted by their gnashing teeth and spittle-kissed mouths.

Alistair and Oghren charged forward with their weapons raised. Alistair, she could understand. He as well as Shale and herself were immune to the taint. It seemed daunting at times to consider that for the others, even a scratch of a darkspawn claw could be their undoing. That they rushed willingly into battle was sometimes difficult for Nema to comprehend.

When a creature swung its blade toward Leliana's open flank, Alistair lunged in the way and readily took the blow to his hamstring in her stead. As he fell, Leliana dropped her bow and slashed the darkspawn's throat with a large sweeping motion of her dagger while her bow clattered on the ground. Was that the Grey Wardens' burden, then? Or just chivalrous silliness? It was certainly more notable than Oghren swatting at both Wynne's and then Silfee's rump when either woman ventured too close to his axe.

The nice thing about being so deep beneath the surface was that they were that much closer to lyrium. It made the death at Nema's fingertips that much more powerful, that much more spastic. She wondered if Wynne could feel it, as well. The darkspawn crackled and shrieked as they were enveloped in the flames that Nema willed at them.

Shale appeared to be a bit too comfortable down at these depths. Golems were designed with destruction in mind, Nema supposed. It stood there, happily murdering darkspawn with its fists. Sometimes it would pick one up and tear its head off, all the while announcing that it wished there were bird-shaped genlocks.

It must have been soothing to know that those creatures had no redemption. The best one could do was kill them before they killed you. No one would stay Shale's arm and say, "Wait. I want to question this one," or say that the darkspawn attacked out of fear or desperation or speak of its family.

"Alistair!" Leliana was on her knees beside him. "Do not try to get up."

"It's just a scratch," he insisted. "My armor took most of the damage."

"You're bleeding."

Wynne made her way to them and knelt down. She immediately pressed her hands along Alistair's thigh. "You are lucky your armor is so durable. I was amazed when your leg didn't come clean off."

Alistair squirmed in the rust-colored dust. "That tickles!"

"Hush."

Wynne's healing was far more sophisticated than anything Nema had ever managed to conjure. One of the first spells that every apprentice learned was that blast of cooling comfort that Wynne now used, but her years of training expanded on that first basic spell. She wove blue threads of magic atop his leg that gently pulled flesh back together, while simultaneously numbing the agony of such an injury. One side effect of such magic was the not quite unpleasant tingling that was making Alistair chuckle uncomfortably.

"It's going to scar, isn't it?" he muttered. "I just know it's going to scar."

"Perhaps," Wynne murmured.

"Blast it." His mouth curled up like he was going to giggle, but then he winced instead. "Tell me I'll still be pretty, even with a scar. Do this for me, Wynne?"

Her voice was stern, but there was mirth in her face. "Let me concentrate, Alistair."

"Today, you are my hero," Leliana said. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "Thank you."

"Alright." Wynne dropped her hands and inhaled. "It will be tender in the days to come, but you should be able to walk on it."

"What would I do without you, Wynne?" Alistair asked.

"Crawl, most likely." She smiled.

Leliana helped Alistair to his feet.

"First day, they come and catch everyone.
Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat.
Third day, the men are all gnawed on again.
Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate.
Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn.
Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams.
Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew.
Eighth day, we hate it as she is violated.
Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin.
Now she does feast, as she's become the beast."

Nema could feel her hackles raise. Silfee cocked her head to one side as she listened to the recitation, but Oghren just silently pointed to the tunnels of Bownammar. They quietly funneled into the twisting trails of the darkspawn stronghold and followed the voice.

The creature they found was no darkspawn. The dwarven woman looked different than the scavenger they found in Ortan Thaig. Her features were sunken and blisters adorned her skin. She sat untouched by darkspawn in a room that had sacks of flesh sprouting out of the wall. The dwarf dry-washed her hands and repeated her poem like a prayer, her body rocking with each new day announced.

"Is this darkspawn corruption?" Silfee asked. She circled around the dwarf, unable to conceal her grimace. "It looks... different."

Some of the sacks on the wall pulsed.

"Corruption! The men did that!" The woman's hands flailed up suddenly. She was feverish and much too pale. "Their wounds festered and their minds left. They are like dogs, marched ahead, the first to die."

Her hands fell limp at her side. "Not us. Not me. Not Laryn. We are not cut. We are fed. Friends and flesh and blood and bile and... and all I could do was wish that Laryn went first. I wished it upon her so that I would be spared." She couldn't make eye contact with anyone. Her shoulders jerked up as if to protect her from from their stares. "But I had to watch. I had to see the change. How do you endure that? How did Branka endure?"

Branka? So they were getting closer.

"Branka!" Oghren barked. He grabbed the woman's shoulders and shook her. "Where is she, Hespith?"

Hespith looked dead at him, then. The blood vessels around her eyes were red and ugly. "I will not speak of her! Of what she did, of what we have become! I will not turn!"

Oghren continued to hold Hespith, close enough so she could see her own angry gaze reflected off the glint of his teeth. Her voice grew softer as her shoulders went slack, defeated. "Her lover and I could not turn her," she said. "Forgive her... but no, she cannot be forgiven. Not for what she did. Not for what she has become."

"A lover in the dark," Silfee laughed. "No wonder she left Oghren."

Oghren sucked air in between his teeth. "This explains a lot. Course, if I knew she had those interests, I could've made some adjustments."

"There is too much darkness here," Hespith ground out. "The Anvil, it is in the darkness, surrounded by it, pulling Branka in. No, I swore not to speak of it, not to think of it! La, la, la, la, la... I will not hear any more about Branka!"

"We can end this," Nema told her. "Tell us what we need to know."

Hespith twisted suddenly and broke free of Oghren's grasp. "I will not become what I've seen! Not Laryn! Not Branka!" She turned on her heels and dashed off down a winding hallway.

Nema gestured for the group to follow and they were on the sick dwarf's heels, lured by the pressured pattern of her voice. Nema granted Hespith a large berth as she staggered and spouted off verses.

"She became obsessed... that is the word but it is not strong enough. Blessed Stone, there was nothing left in her but the Anvil."

Silfee's brow was dropping more and more into furrowed distress as they continued. Oghren's expression was dark and Alistair was becoming skittish with his shield tightly clenched in one hand. Only Leliana seemed to perk up as Hespith fed them more pieces of her fevered tale.

"They took Laryn. They made her eat the others, our friends. She tore off her husband's face and drank his blood. And while she ate, she grew. She swelled and turned gray and she smelled like them. They remade her in their image. Then she made more of them. Broodmother..."

A metal door, encrusted in rust and gore swung open as if welcoming them. It had been too easy. Nema should have known that. Nothing could ever be that easy unless the darkspawn had wanted them deep in their catacombs. All the spiderwebs and fractured stone and dirt and ore and unlit niches could not have prepared them.

The drop off just beyond the open door was unexpected. It was difficult not to tumble and roll down into the pit below. The bones that littered the sides of the slope and withered husks of spider chitin told Nema this was a routine activity. How many unfortunates had been struck dead as they attempted to crawl back toward that door?

Broodmother. Hespith had called it a Broodmother. Massive and stationary, it's gigantic tentacles lashed out at them and tried to pull them in. That had once been a dwarf? That was what became of the Laryn that Hespith had mentioned?

Gray and unthinking. With its numerous teats cracked and bloodied from feeding its children, the Broodmother desired only one thing: to eat.

And they had fallen into that simple, but effective trap. Nema channeled her energy into her staff. The darkspawn thought to use them as food, did they? They used the very people they tormented and murdered to mother their genlocks and hurlocks?

Nema clenched her jaw and steadied her feet. It ended now.