Shadow and Rose

by Lady Norbert

A/N: This chapter's a bit like pulling teeth. Of course, the headache doesn't help (never does).

I do want to give a bit of a shout out here, to "magicklorelai" on YouTube. Her Let's Play videos have helped me a lot with dialogue and keeping events straight in my head, especially since a lot of the dialogue choices she makes for her Warden are at least similar to what I chose when I played Elissa. (My original plan was to play the game and write the fic simultaneously, but... that didn't quite work out.)

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Anvil of the Void

Lines of lyrium run through the anvil.

I'm still having a hard time with what happened, even though Elissa's all right. Watching that thing pick her up and slam her against the rocky wall... well, at least it's dead, and she's not. We all took a rest right there, on the floor of the broodmother's cavern. I sat with my back to the cave wall, and Elissa sort of sat in my lap so I could keep a hold on her for a while.

"Don't ever do that again," I told her quietly.

"Do what?"

"Get that badly hurt. My heart can't take it."

"I didn't do it on purpose," she joked feebly. Still leaning on me, she looked over at Morrigan. "You still didn't tell us what you're doing here."

"Does it matter? I am here."

"No, I suppose it doesn't. Thank you." She turned her gaze to Oghren. "How are you, dwarf friend?"

"Itching to get going. The Anvil can't be too far now; I can practically smell Branka."

Hespith put in one more appearance before we left. She had some more creepy lines to mutter about "Branka, my love," and how the true horror wasn't that the members of Branka's house had fallen to the darkspawn - it was that Branka had allowed it. I wasn't sure, then, what that meant.

Found out a little farther on, though, once we got moving again. We rested maybe a quarter of an hour, then forged onward - and we'd barely gotten into the next chamber when there was a horrible crashing sound as several heavy rocks came tumbling down behind us. The way back was blocked.

"Now what?" Wynne asked, sounding more alarmed than I'd ever heard her.

"Let me be blunt with you," said a new voice. "After all this time, my tolerance for social graces is fairly limited. That doesn't bother you, I hope."

Oghren, for the first time since we'd met him, actually looked and sounded overjoyed. "Shave my back and call me an elf! Branka? By the Stone, I barely recognized you!"

His wife, by comparison, sounded bored. "Oghren. It figures you'd eventually find your way here. Hopefully, you can find your way back more easily." She looked at Elissa, and managed to appear even more bored. "And how shall I address you? Hired sword of the latest lordling to come looking for me? Or just the only one who didn't mind Oghren's ale-breath?"

To my surprise, Oghren growled, and moved slightly in front of Elissa. "Be respectful, woman! You're talking to a Grey Warden!"

"Ah, so an important errand boy, then. I suppose something serious has happened." She started pacing back and forth a bit. "Is Endrin dead? That seems most likely. He was on the old and wheezy side."

"Yes, he is dead, and the Assembly is deadlocked," Elissa replied gravely. "Orzammar needs a new king to defend against a Blight."

Branka snorted. "A king won't defeat a Blight. We've had forty generations of kings and lost everything." Then she started talking about the Anvil of the Void, the means by which the ancient dwarves had forged golems, and how instead of being lost it should be used to protect them against the darkspawn. She scorned Elissa's offer of help, though. "The Anvil lies on the other side of a gauntlet of traps designed by Caridin himself. My people and I have given body and soul to unlocking its secrets."

"Yes, we've seen Hespith." Elissa's voice had gone cold. "We know what became of the others of your house. Is the Anvil worth that?"

"Enough questions! If you wish me to get involved with this imbecilic election, I must first have the Anvil." She and Elissa stared each other down for a moment. "There is only one way out, Warden - forward. Through Caridin's maze and out to where the Anvil waits." I'm not positive, but I think she collapsed the tunnel in order to trap us.

Oghren's joy had turned to outrage. "What has this place done to you?!" he demanded. "I remember marrying a girl you could talk to for one minute and see her brilliance!"

"I am your Paragon," she said simply, and walked away. With the tunnel blocked and the Assembly still deadlocked, we had no choice but to follow. As we did, she sort of hid from us, speaking to us from a distance rather like Hespith had done, and between our fights with the darkspawn she ranted about how no one in her house - "even my Hespith" - had understood why she'd done what she did. Essentially, she sacrificed her own household in order to create a broodmother, because the broodmother would be a limitless supply of darkspawn who could be used to trigger all the traps that Caridin had set.

I really don't want to write about this anymore. The traps were horrible. Much as I hate to admit it, I'm grateful Morrigan turned up in time for this second gauntlet because we needed the help. One room was a gas chamber - we were all in danger of suffocating on the deadly gas, and I really thought Oghren was going to succumb. Fortunately, we found the four spigots that shut off the gas before that could happen. Maker's breath, Branka was a monster, but the traps made me wonder if Caridin was really all that much better.

So finally we reached the last trap, which was a huge and complicated stone... thing that shot beams of energy and forced us to fight with ghosts and I'm really at a loss for how to describe it because I've never seen or even imagined anything like it in my life. Andraste's gauntlet in Haven was like a child's game compared to everything we encountered in Orzammar, and that really should tell you all you need to know.

We hadn't really been prepared for what awaited us beyond that final trap, though. I mean, we'd been hearing about the Paragon Caridin for a while up to that point, but to actually meet him... well, that was another thing altogether. This is someone who was born a couple thousand years ago, after all, so for him to be alive was bizarre. Except I guess you can't really call him alive, because he was a gigantic metal golem. Do they count as alive? Sentient, yes, but I don't know whether 'alive' is the right word.

We entered an absolutely massive chamber that was populated by a number of golems, and I never realized it before, but Shale is actually on the small side for a golem. (I asked Elissa about it later, and she said that Shale told her Wilhelm, the mage who used to own Shale, chiseled it down to size so it would fit through doorways. So apparently Shale was originally much more, well, golem-sized.)

The largest of the golems studied us as we approached. "My name is Caridin," he said. "Once, longer ago than I care to think, I was a Paragon to the dwarves of Orzammar."

"Caridin?" Shale repeated. "The Caridin, of Caridin's Cross?"

"Ah, there is a voice I recognize! Shale of the House of Cadash, step forward!" The rest of us just sort of looked at each other in shock.

"You know my name? Is it you that forged me, then? Is it you that gave me my name?"

"Have you forgotten? Ah, it has been so long. I made you into the golem you are now, Shale, but before that you were a dwarf, just as I was - the finest warrior to serve King Valtor, and the only woman to volunteer." So Elissa was right when she said that she somehow thought of Shale as female.

Shale, for its - for her own part, seemed absolutely baffled. "The only woman? I was a dwarf?"

"I laid you on the Anvil of the Void in this very room," Caridin replied. "If you seek the Anvil, then you must care about my story, or prepare to relive it."

He told us, then, the sickening secret of making golems. He'd been a master smith all right, but the Anvil of the Void was what made him a Paragon. In order to make the golems, he'd had to take living dwarves and put them in giant suits of armor, then pour molten lyrium into the suits - into their mouths, their eyes, all that. I could have vomited. Who in the world comes up with something so horrible? Who could do that to their own people? But he'd done it. Initially Caridin only worked with volunteers - like Shale, apparently - but the king became greedy and began forcing people he didn't like to become golems. Caridin finally had enough, and put his foot down, and as punishment he was forced to become a golem himself.

"My apprentices knew enough to put me in this form, but I never taught them how to fashion a control rod, so I retained my mind." He looked at Shale. "You were amongst the most loyal, Shale. You remained at my side throughout, and at the end, I sent you away out of mercy."

"I... I do not remember." She sounded confused, even a little sad.

"We have remained entombed here ever since, and I have sought a way to destroy the Anvil. Alas, I cannot do it myself. No golem can touch it."

As if on cue, Branka came skidding into the chamber behind us, shrieking about how she wanted the Anvil. Caridin looked at Shale again, pleading. "Shale, you fought to destroy the Anvil once. Do not allow it to fall into unthinking hands again!"

She insisted she had no memory of this, and asked if he'd used control rods to force her and other golems to do this fighting. Caridin said that he'd destroyed their control rods, but maybe his apprentices had figured out how to replace them, and that if this was the case then they only lacked the Anvil itself to create an endless supply of slaves. He appealed to Elissa then. "You, stranger, please help me! Do not let the Anvil enslave more souls than it already has!"

"Don't listen to him!" Branka screeched. "He's been trapped in here for a thousand years, stewing in his own madness! Help me and you will have an army the likes of which you've never seen!"

"Branka, you mad, bleeding nug-tail! Does this thing mean so much to you that you can't even see what you've lost to get it?" That, of course, was Oghren. While he argued with his wife, I looked to Elissa, and I could see she was torn.

"The Anvil enslaves living souls," she said finally. "It must be destroyed."

"It fights with Caridin, then?" asked Shale. "Good. That seems right."

"Thank you, stranger," Caridin added. "Your compassion shames me."

"Branka, don't throw your life away for this!" Oghren yelled. He turned to Elissa. "Warden, please, just give her the blasted thing. She's confused! Maybe once she calms down we can talk to her!"

Elissa looked torn, and I thought I knew what she was thinking. On the one hand, she didn't want to be the cause of any more dwarves becoming golems. On the other, she didn't want to deprive Oghren of the wife he'd been seeking for two years. "I don't think that's a risk I'm willing to take, Oghren," she said at last. "I'm - I'm sorry, I am."

Branka snorted. "You are not the only master smith here, Caridin," she said, and for the first time she held up a golem control rod. "Golems, obey me! Attack!"

With her control rod, Branka was able to command roughly half of the golems around the room, and we had no choice but to fight for our lives. Worse, the control rod apparently kept Caridin from moving at all. "My friend, you must help me!" he begged. "I cannot stop her alone!"

It was a pretty brutal battle. Almost as bad as the broodmother - probably would have been worse, but we'd picked up an extra mage and Caridin's golem friends were helping us out. As it was it was bad, really bad. I felt sorry for Oghren, who made it a point not to watch as Branka was felled; at least it was one of Caridin's golems who took her down, so he didn't have to try to be friendly with her killer at any point.

"Another life lost because of my invention," Caridin said sadly, once the fighting was done. "I wish no mention of it had made it to history."

"Yeah. You ain't kidding," Oghren muttered. "Stupid woman. Always knew the Anvil would kill her."

"How is it that the woman was not able to disable me as she did you, Caridin?" Shale wanted to know.

They spoke for a few minutes of Wilhelm, and the alterations he had made to Shale during his ownership of her. Caridin decided that must have made the difference - that and Shale's naturally stubborn personality. He added that the paralysis Shale experienced in the village was normal for a golem whose master had died. Turning to Elissa, he said, "At least it ends here. The Anvil waits for you to destroy it. Is there any boon I can grant you as a final favor?"

She hesitated. "Oghren? You lost Branka to this... what do you want?"

He looked startled, and grateful. "I don't suppose you can bring Branka back? Maybe make her a golem like you?"

"I would not do such a thing to her, even if I could," Caridin said gently.

"Somehow, I didn't think so. Well, I don't want anything that would remind me of this - best it's just done." He walked away to be by himself for a few minutes.

"It was good to meet you, Paragon," Wynne said politely. I saw Morrigan roll her eyes, but she kept silent. "I intend to make sure your warnings about the golems are heard by the Circle of Magi."

Abruptly, Oghren came back before anyone could say anything else. "There is still the matter of the election," he said. "We still need a Paragon to get the Assembly's support, right?"

So, for our help with everything, Caridin agreed to forge one last item - a crown for the candidate of our choosing. And it was a great crown. Only problem was, he refused to cast a deciding vote. He didn't even want to know the names of the candidates. He told Elissa to give the crown to whichever one she felt was most worthy. Then he bade us farewell and dove into the lava. No, really.

"Now what do we do?" I asked.

"Now? I say we get out of here," said Oghren.

I feel like writing about all of this has taken almost as long as actually doing it.

So with the Anvil destroyed and the crown in our possession, we started through the tunnels back to Orzammar. Along the way, we made a small side trip; speaking with Caridin seemed to have unlocked more of Shale's memories, and she was able to actually locate Cadash Thaig, where she lived. There was a giant monument there which listed the names of all the dwarves who volunteered to become golems, and Shale found her name. It was spelled as Shayle, but there she was. She seemed very happy about it, in her way, and very grateful to Elissa for helping her to recover her lost history. So that was good.

Maker, I'm tired. Anyway, I hope this is all readable. I know I've skipped a lot of detail but there was just too much to remember. I'm actually impressed I've remembered as much as I have. Elissa's been talking to Oghren, trying to help him with what he's going through, and we're all trying to figure out just who to put on the throne once we get back to Orzammar. I kind of think Elissa's upset that it was put in her hands, since she's not even a dwarf, so if we can all come to an agreement that'll be best.