(Extra super special warning: this one's dark, guys. Dragon Age levels of darkness.)
90. Battle Hymn of the Champion
"First day, they come and catch everyone."
Marnan stopped at the sound of a distant voice, its echo bouncing eerily up the tunnel. She motioned the others to a halt and listened.
"Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat."
"What is that?" Percival asked beside her.
"I don't know." Marnan swallowed and started forward through the bowels of the darkspawn nest once again. The steps of her comrades behind her were more cautious.
"Third day, the men are all gnawed on again."
The tunnel twisted ahead of them, narrowing so that they had to pass through one at a time. The walls wept with viscous flesh-colored goo.
"Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate."
The voice was up ahead, getting louder as they stepped closer. Hugo growled as something fell wetly from the ceiling of the tunnel, but there was no movement beyond that, and they passed on.
"Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn."
"She sounds unseated," Percival murmured. Marnan shuddered and nodded, trying not to listen to the words, because something told her this rhyme was no idle poem.
"Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams."
The tunnel opened up into ancient dwarven masonry, but it had fallen to the Taint long ago. Awful fleshy growths clung to the walls and corners, weeping with the same goo she had noted before. The smell was abhorrent.
"Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew."
Behind her, someone retched. Garott forced a chuckle. "You'd think a blood mage would have a stronger stomach than that, elf."
"Shut up. This is disgusting."
"Eighth day, we hate it as she is violated."
Marnan was shaking now, but nonetheless wound her way through the maze of fleshy masses that had overtaken the ruined thaig. They had to press on.
"Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin."
"Cannibalism," Felicity breathed. "That must be how they induce it." She sounded horrified by something. Marnan did not want to know what.
"Now she does feast, as she's become the beast."
Now, only an old door separated them from the speaker. Marnan checked behind her, to make sure the others were ready. They were silent and pale, but they were prepared for a fight.
However, when she opened it, there was no fight to be had. All that met them was an increase in the unholy stench and the beginning of the poem again.
"First day, they come and catch everyone," chanted a voice in the corner of the large chamber. A dwarf huddled there, hunched over and staring blankly at a wall. "Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat."
Marnan recoiled as she got closer. No, not a dwarf. A ghoul. The Taint was strong in her, eyes murky and black splotches taking over her skin.
"Third day, the men are all gnawed on again." The ghoul scratched her arm compulsively, seemingly unaware of their approach. "Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate."
"Wait," Oghren breathed. "I know her. Hespith?"
"Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn." No response.
"Hespith! Sod it, woman, where's Branka?"
"Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams." The Wardens gathered around the woman. "Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew."
Felicity dared to venture closer to her, peering at the woman, Hespith. "This behavior is compulsive. It seems that the Taint has driven her mad."
"Eighth day, we hate it as she is violated."
"This ain't no Taint, woman!" Oghren growled.
"Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin."
"It's not Taint that did this," Percival whispered, looking pale. "This is something completely different."
"Now she does feast, as she's become the beast."
Oghren let out a cry of frustration, stalking up to the woman and slapping her across the face.
The ghoul twitched, broken out of her reverie, and Marnan reached a hand back to her axe, just in case. However, this ghoul was no more mindless than Ruck had been. Her Taint-blinded eyes turning to stare at them, then shifted to focus on something on the far floor. "What's this? Humans? Bland and unlikely. Feeding time brings only kin and clan." Her voice softened. "I am cruel to myself. You are a dream of strangers' faces and open doors."
"Hespith! Come on, girl!"
"I don't understand," Felicity said, continuing to peer at the woman. "This does not act like typical corruption."
"Corruption!" the woman cried, spinning toward Felicity. The mage stumbled back under her regard. "The men did that! Their wounds festered and their minds left. They are like dogs, marched ahead, the first to die."
The woman slumped, and the Wardens listened in dawning horror as she went on.
"Not us. Not me. Not Laryn. We are not cut… we are fed. Friends and flesh and blood and bile and… and…"
"S-stop!" Kazar shuddered. "Just… just stop!"
She did not stop. "All I could do was wish Laryn went first. I wished it upon her so that I would be spared. But I had to watch. I had to see the change. How do you endure that? How did Branka endure?"
"What change?" Felicity breathed.
"More important, Branka was here?" Oghren cut in, like a dog worrying a bone. "Where is she? Is she all right?"
"Branka!" Hespith hissed. "Do not speak to me of Branka! Her lover, and I could not turn her."
"Wait, what?" Oghren sputtered.
"Forgive her… but no, she cannot be forgiven. Not for what she did. Not for what she has become."
The other Wardens looked too shaken to go on, so Marnan stepped forward, waving the Warrior away. Bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed it and placed herself in front of the creature, trying her best to appear nonthreatening. "What did she do, Hespith? What did she become?"
"I... I will not speak of her! Of what she did, of what we have become!" She got increasingly agitated, her voice losing the monotone of the chant. "I will not turn! I will not become what I have seen! Not Laryn! Not Branka!" The woman burst into motion with such suddenness that Marnan stumbled back, fearing an attack.
However, Hespith did not attack. She fled, tearing out of the room, deeper into the acrid tunnels. Hugo started after her, but Percy called him back.
"We should let her go," Percival said solemnly. "She has suffered enough."
Marnan nodded numbly, trying to process what little of the broken story Hespith had spoken of. The others looked similarly shaken: Sten's expression was grim, Oghren and Garott both appeared to be shocked into silence, and Morrigan looked vaguely ill. Kazar was muttering to himself, eyes wide and distant, and Felicity had gone pale as a ghost, also whispering something under her breath.
Not really wanting to, she turned to Felicity. "What does it mean?"
Felicity took a moment to look down at her, and she had to wet her lips a couple times. "For a long time, scholars have wondered how darkspawn turn people into their own kind… I think this dwarf has just told us."
"No," Garott's voice whispered.
"It fills many gaps.," Felicity went on. "Why do darkspawn drag their prey away? How are they able to replenish themselves so quickly? Where do the different species of darkspawn come from? The more sense it makes, the more I wish I didn't know."
"Damn it, Felicity," Marnan said. "Speak plainly!"
Felicity shook her head, struggling for a moment. "The men… the men they turn into ghouls. Like Ruck, and the unlucky ones will devolve into mindless monsters. There has never been a full female ghoul spotted… not even during Blights. Did you know that?
"No, females… if what Hespith said is true, females corrupted with the Taint are taken underground, and cared for, and fed. They are systematically corrupted further through bodily fluids and cannibalism to… to…" She cut herself off with a squeak.
"To become one of them," Garott finished quietly. Felicity nodded and buried her face in her hands.
"Stone…" Oghren groaned. "Branka, what have you done?!"
Marnan shuddered, that awful poem once again running through her head. It was a tale of awful things—torture, and rape, and cannibalism… so much suffering that simply seeing it had driven a woman mad. In what state must this Laryn be?
She took a deep breath and looked back up, because they needed to continue on. She froze, though, as she saw Garott watching her with wide eyes.
"That coulda been you," he whispered, and Marnan felt ill all over again.
He was right. If it hadn't been for the Wardens… the darkspawn would have eventually overwhelmed her.
"Your own father banished you out here," the other dwarf continued. "You mighta been a monster like that, because of him."
"He did not know."
"Does that matter?"
Marnan looked long and hard into the duster's eyes, realizing with flagging heart that, no, it did not. Not with something this horrific. She looked away, her sense of conviction flagging at the terrible thought. Women should not be allowed in the Deep Roads, she realized. Not in the patrols, not in the army, not even in the Legion of the Dead. The risk was simply too high.
"This…" Percival said softly into the tense silence, "This is why we fight darkspawn. This is why we are Grey Wardens." Marnan raised her head, watching the human pace through the chamber, his hound at his heels as he spoke. "Because, no matter how horrific our own crimes—be they thuggery, theft, murder, apostasy, or even blood magic—none of those can hold a candle to the pure, unmitigated evil that is darkspawn." His voice gave strength to Marnan's flagging courage. "These are creatures that corrupt everything, and we must do everything in our power to stop this Blight before it gains a foothold.
"Think of all the women who might one day know the fate of these down here. We fight for them. Think of all the children who might never know what it means to live on untainted soil. We fight for them! Think of all the lives in Thedas, many of whom don't even know there's a Blight begun. They need us to press on; that is our duty as Grey Wardens!"
This got a couple grunts of agreement from the regrouping party. Marnan smiled, glad for the man's help in rallying the others when she could not.
"In war, victory!" Percival said, raising his sword.
Marnan and Felicity spoke the next part with him: "In peace, vigilance."
And then, all together—quietly—they finished, "In death, sacrifice."
Percival nodded and turned, and the party fell into step behind him with renewed vigor. They trotted through the hallways of the old thaig, no longer seeing the corruption as merely spreading growths but rather as indications of the evil that they had to stop. That they could stop.
"Thank you," Marnan said, falling into step beside the nobleman. "We needed that."
To her surprise, the man gave her a tight smile. "You did deputize me, if I recall correctly."
"And it is reassuring to see that my choice in lieutenants was no folly."
Percival shrugged a bit. Hugo, walking at the man's other side, turned his head and whined anxiously as they passed a side corridor. "What's wrong, boy?"
"Tis the creature," Morrigan said, peering into the darkness. "She is following us."
Marnan shuddered again, wondering what Hespith was doing. She did not think the woman was in any way malevolent, but the reminder of what they had done to her did not help.
The distraction did not last long as they stepped out into a wide open cavern and were greeted by a charging ogre. Marnan threw herself gladly into the next series of battles, thinking little as they tore through the old thaig. Hespith's whispers followed them through the cavernous halls, the woman seemingly unable to contain her story, now that she had begun to tell it.
"They took Laryn," Hespith's voice warbled behind them as they stepped through a heavy double door. "They made her eat the others, our friends. She tore off her husband's face and drank his blood."
They entered a hewn tunnel, where there was an ominous rumbling up ahead. Hugo seemed agitated by whatever it was, his ears back flat against his head. They all had their weapons out, so none of them had a hand free to pet the animal.
"And while she ate," Hespith said, "she grew. She swelled and turned grey and she smelled like them. They remade her in their image. Then, she made more of them."
The fleshy growths were everywhere—floor, ceiling, walls. Marnan's boots sunk into them as they turned a corner and beheld the monster that had once been a dwarven woman named Laryn.
"Broodmother…"
There was no dwarf left in this monstrous creature. She was a pile of flesh, mound upon mound of corrupted fat and skin, piled higher than most houses. Tentacles squirmed around her gelatinous form, some waving in the air while others wound into the dirt.
Her eyes, though… her eyes were those of a dwarven woman, maddened and corrupted by Taint, but proof that all that Hespith had said was true.
Marnan froze, the fact crashing down upon her that, in another reality, this might have been her. Without Duncan and the Wardens—yes, even Brosca—she would have been dragged back here. She would have been fed corruption until she bulged and deformed. She would have happily eaten the flesh of her one-time companions and comrades. She would be creating more of these creatures, continuing the deadly cycle.
It could not be allowed to stand.
Marnan hefted her axe, staring down the monster as it roared. Genlocks appeared out of the darkness to guard their broodmother, and roared in echo.
Marnan had her own roar in return. "For Laryn!" she cried, surprising herself, but the others took up the cry. A fireball shot into the broodmother and her kind, and Hugo streaked after with a resounding bark. Marnan was at the dog's heels.
The first swing of her axe bit into one of the tentacles blocking the broodmother. The monster shrieked, and Oghren dove in ahead of her to sink his own axe into her meaty flesh. Sten, who had a warhammer at this point, knocked the genlocks aside like toys.
Percival was stuck at the side of the cavern, fighting a tentacle that had sprung up from the ground under him. His greatsword hewed at it, but even his two-handed sword had difficulty cutting through it. Morrigan, meanwhile, was blocking the entrance from back-up with webbing in her spider form.
Lightning zapped through the broodmother, and she thrashed. Marnan was knocked away with one giant tentacle, Oghren sent flying the other direction. Garott, a moment later, climbed up its back, smashing his hand axe into the creature's neck.
One of its tentacles shot up and grabbed Garott by the ankle and started swinging him around. Marnan leapt in and planted herself at the base of the tentacle, then began chopping at it like a woodcutter looking to fell a tree.
And fall it did. Three hard swings cut the tentacle off at the base, and Garott landed in a pile of limp appendage with an oof, dizzy but unharmed.
The same couldn't be said about Oghren, who was the next to be grabbed. He was thrown against the wall—fortunately, Felicity was fast with her heals.
The chamber was filling up, however, as more darkspawn tunneled in. A hurlock appeared from practically below where Marnan and Garott were trying to untangle the latter from the hewn tentacle. It burst up between them with a roar, and Marnan smashed her axe forward in reaction. Garott's dagger pierced its back at the same time, and the monster went down without doing more than scratching Marnan's armor.
There were more, though. Sten was buried in the things, despite how Hugo tore through the monsters and Kazar shot at clusters with wild abandon. Felicity was surrounded, Morrigan's entropic spells standing between her and death.
Marnan entertained the idea of helping with the smaller darkspawn, but the broodmother had other ideas. Something thick wrapped around her waist, and Marnan was lifted clear off the ground.
The monster brought the dwarf close to its face and roared, and Marnan fought not to gag at its rancid breath. She brought her axe down and around on the monster's exposed chest, cutting a weeping black line across the monster's right breast.
It roared again, Tainted spittle splattering across her, and Marnan brought her axe around to swipe at that monstrously deformed face. It jerked her back, and her axe swiped by harmlessly.
The grip of the tentacle around her tightened, and she felt her armor buckle under the pressure. Marnan grit her teeth against the pain as deforming metal met her ribcage. A burst of healing from somewhere below her eased it, but there may be a slight breathing problem now.
The ground rumbled under the broodmother, and the monster sank into a lopsided sinkhole with a shriek and loosened her grip. This distracted it enough for Marnan to wiggle through, and she looked back at her companions in time to see Kazar gesture, clamping a maw of stone over the tentacle that had been holding her. The elf smiled thinly as he noticed her regard, then turned to encase a charging pair of genlocks in ice.
Marnan was in front of the broodmother's distended stomach, So she rose up and took a swing, rupturing it open. What spilled out was a nightmare of blackened innards and corrupted goo. It coated her boots, making footing slick.
The monster roared, and Marnan found herself borne up once again, this time by a grip on her thigh that had her dangling upside-down.
Her vision spun as the broodmother shook her around. In the midst of the dizzying spinning, Marnan caught a glimpse of someone up (down?) on the ledge above the group. Even upside-down, she recognized the Paragon who had once been the star of Orzammar. Uncorrupted and watching their battle coolly.
"Branka!" Marnan shouted, pointing with her axe. The broodmother shook her again, and Marnan lost sight of the woman. By the time Marnan swung her axe up and cut her leg free—making her topple onto the broodmother's shoulder—the Paragon had disappeared from her previous perch.
It was enough for Oghren, though. The Warrior, who had been raging in a circle of darkspawn, suddenly roared out, "BRANKA!" and disappeared through a crevice off to the side of the chamber where the woman had just been. The darkspawn he had been fighting followed him out, as did a good half-dozen after that.
"Oghren, wait!" Felicity yelled, but he was long gone.
Percival cursed and dove into the crevice after him, Hugo at his heels. Morrigan gulped down a lyrium potion and shouted, "I have poultices: I will keep them alive!" Then, she turned into a wolf and surged out after them.
"Good luck!" Felicity shouted back, healing Marnan even as the dwarf felt something acidic burn through her side.
Marnan swung down, cleaving her axe into the broodmother's left arm from her precarious perch on the thing's thrashing shoulder. Garott, meanwhile, hacked at the monster's other side, apparently trying to climb it but unable to get a good foothold through all the puss and blood.
Sten defended the mages, letting Felicity concentrate on keeping the pair of them alive. Easier said than done: the broodmother's fluids burned, and she had a tentacle wrapped around one of Marnan's ankles yet again. Marnan clung to her axe, still lodged in the thing's collarbone, so the tentacle's tugging proved fruitless.
A volley arrows pounded against the wall nearby as a line of genlocks took advantage of her being stretched out before them. Marnan grit her teeth over a scream as she felt two of the things piercing through her rent armor and diving deep in her back. So deep she could feel the metal arrowheads scraping things that were not meant to ever meet metal.
She didn't have time to assess the damage, however, as the broodmother got another tentacle onto her leg and gripped it above the first. With a twist and a yank, Marnan's right leg broke in half with a pop and a snap. This time, she did scream, but stubbornly gripped her axe for dear life. Stone, she could feel her knee tearing away from her leg muscles.
"ELF!" Garott's voice called wildly, and it took Marnan a moment to realize through the pain he was being wrapped up and constricted by a tentacle. "We could use some fireworks, here!"
"I can't! I'll hit you!" Kazar's voice shouted back.
"DO IT!" Marnan shouted, trusting her dwarven magic resistance to keep her alive. She ignored what tasted like blood in the back of her throat.
It seemed to take forever before the air heated around her. The rancid cavern air started swirling, and the acrid stench of burning flesh became stifling.
The broodmother threw back its head and shrieked, and the grips around Marnan's leg loosened. She grit her teeth against the pain (between her shattered leg and the arrows, she doubted even Felicity could do anything for it now) and instead steadied herself as best she could on the monster's tossing shoulder. She planted her good leg deep into the flesh of the monster's breast, and wriggled her axe free of its collarbone. The heat was stifling, fire blocking her view of anything but the broodmother, but the force of the vortex also kept her shoved up into the thing's side. Her leg was mangled, there were arrowheads inside her, and the monster's acidic juices coated her—she could take a couple burns on top.
With a roar of her own, Marnan yanked her axe out and swung it around, the blade sinking satisfyingly into the monster's throat. It gurgled and spat, and she did it again, and again. She didn't stop swinging until its head flew free, and the body slumped down in a mass of charred, oozing flesh.
She bounced as the body collapsed into itself, taking her with it. Garott reached in and yanked her free before she could be buried in rolls of fat and blood. The pair of them rolled across the chamber, coming to a stop in the middle of the room.
And only then, the threat of the broodmother nullified, did Marnan feel it. Pain. Weakness. A metallic taste in her mouth that, upon rolling on her side and spitting, did indeed appear to be blood.
Marnan gingerly reached back to touch the arrow shafts, trying to guess what they'd hit. Something important, judging by the waviness of her vision. Even brushing the shafts shot pain through her.
Marnan had been on the battlefield enough to recognize a mortal wound when she felt one.
For a moment, tight fear flashed through her, then despair. No. She shoved it aside. No. She wouldn't linger on that. She could hear her companions cleaning up the last of the darkspawn in the chamber, and there would be more ahead. She couldn't break down; they needed her to be strong.
The last of the broodmother's guards went down, and Wardens had a brief respite, but roars echoed from the tunnel that Oghren and the others had disappeared down. Marnan could feel the mass of them ahead, now agitated by the death of their broodmother. Her Warden senses were smothered in it.
Percy, Oghren, and Morrigan had no hope of fending off that many enraged darkspawn alone.
Kazar, pale and panting, let his blood mage aura drop. He reached down and pulled Felicity to her feet—the healer had a gash down her back that couldn't have helped her spellcast any.
Sten, standing over them both, eyed the path that had led them into the chamber. "More are coming."
"Let's not be here when they get here," Garott said, pushing up to his feet. He turned to help Marnan up, then went stone-still as he really looked at her. She didn't want to know what he saw.
"Marnan!" Felicity cried in alarm, going pale. She raised her staff to cast.
"Don't!" Marnan grit out, rolling over and managing to get a knee under her. She stayed steady through a wave of vertigo. Even speaking was making her dizzy. Keep going. Just keep going until you can't. "Don't waste your magic. I can feel the damage. Any healing you do won't last through any movement."
"Great," Garott groaned. "Guess we stand here."
"No." Painstakingly, Marnan got her axe under her. She grit her teeth as she climbed to her feet, leaning on the weapon for support. Her insides burned, and her broken leg would take none of her weight, but at least she was upright, not lying in the muck. "No, you go after the others. Help them. Find Branka. I will do what I can to slow down your pursuit."
Even Sten turned to look at her measuringly at that.
"No!" Felicity said.
"Fuck no," Garott snapped.
"I can't walk, and the forces ahead will overwhelm the others if they don't get help; I know you feel them too." The darkspawn were closing in around her senses like a noose, and they heard the distance sound of Hugo's barking echoing down the tunnel. "There's no time to argue! Go!"
"She speaks wisdom," Sten said. "Come!" The Qunari took off down the hall, and Kazar cursed and scurried after him.
Garott and Felicity lingered, though, even as the first darkspawn rounded into the chamber from the entrance tunnel. Garott's hand axe spun across the chamber and embedded into its throat.
Felicity reached in to steady her, and Marnan felt a trickle of healing magic seep into her. Marnan turned a scolding look on the mage, but the tears in Felicity's eyes kept her from saying anything. "For strength," she whispered.
"Princess, you sure about this?" Garott asked, retrieving the weapon.
"Yes." Two more hurlocks rounded into the chamber, and Garott dodged them and stabbed one from behind. Marnan turned to meet the other, balancing on one foot as she somehow raised her axe toward it. "I'm leaving Orzammar to you, Brosca. Please, do what is best for the city."
The remaining hurlock lunged at her, and she met it with a wild swing that immediately put her on her knees. She grit her teeth and cut it off at the knees. The scrabbling of genlocks could be heard approaching through the entrance, even as someone down the tunnel screamed.
"Sod that!" Garott spat, even as Felicity grabbed his arm and they started down the tunnel. "We'll be back for you! Don't you dare die before then!"
"Just go!" she shouted. She glanced behind her as a trio of genlocks charged around the bend, making sure her friends were gone. When one of them darted around the corner and made for the tunnel, Marnan roared to her remaining foot and lunged at it, blocking it and any others from following.
In war, victory.
She hit her knees again soon after, her leg shrieking in pain and every breath bursting through a sharp pain in her abdomen. Her axe, however, was not weakened. It was a whirling blade of death to the darkspawn that dared to attempt to follow the Wardens. This was what she had been born to do: the sole sentinel against the wave of death that would crush the world's only hope.
In peace, vigilance.
This was her duty, to protect them by taking down every one of these monsters that she could. This was her Calling.
In death, sacrifice.