Jowan wasn't wrong about being cursed. Being a Grey Warden was a curse in a lot of ways, one of which being that no matter how hard they tried, they never went very long without finding themselves hunting for monsters in the dark. Again and again and again, they found themselves swallowed by earth in some dank pit underground that was endlessly belching out darkspawn. It was hard not to think about how futile it could feel. Adara stared into the dark mouth of the mine, its floor sloping away into darkness. Sunlight beat down on her back as if to taunt her about what she would be leaving behind.

"That's the last of them up here," Leo announced, his words punctuated by the squishing sound of Carver pulling his greatsword out of a hurlock's torso.

A half-dozen or so dead darkspawn lay scattered around the mine's entrance. The Grey Wardens had hit them hard and fast to keep them from alerting however many could be deeper in the mine. Unfortunately, those were not the only corpses. The mutilated remains of a few villagers were stacked haphazardly by a campfire, and it would be nauseatingly difficult to determine exactly how many of them there were without time their party wouldn't risk sparing. Get in, clear the place out, figure out what we need to seal up, and get out. From what the mayor of Eskford had told her, Adara had no reason to believe it was an unusually large or organized group of darkspawn. They had snatched up some villagers but hadn't been bold enough to attempt a proper raid of the town itself yet.

"With any luck, the ones inside will think we're just this lot," Carver said, nudging the hurlock with the toe of his boot. "On your order, Commander."

Adara nodded. "Let's get it finished. The town will want to collect their dead." With a small gesture, she conjured a spell wisp to bob in the air in front of her, giving them enough light to at least keep from tumbling into a deeper shaft. Jowan did the same, giving them even more light to see by. "Leo, bring up the rear. Carver, with me."

As they began to walk inside, Carver turned his head and gave Jowan a skeptical look. "Watch your aim. I swear you singed me earlier."

"Rubbish. I can aim at least as well as you can while you're swinging that sword around. It's a wonder you haven't lopped off my head."

"That might not be an accident if it happens."

"Hush." Adara kept her voice quiet, but the warning for them to behave was apparent.

The mine sloped downward at an angle that was steep enough to make walking feel awkward but not so steep as to be a climb. The walls and ceiling were shored up with wooden beams, and small tunnels began to branch off into darkness on both sides. When they had first arrived in Eskford, the mayor had attempted to sketch out a map in the dirt, giving them a rough idea of the mine's layout. These offshoot tunnels were shallow and narrow, not good places for the darkspawn to lurk. Adara slowed by each one just long enough to confirm that the only darkspawn they were sensing were deeper within the mine. The prickling feeling in the back of her mind only grew stronger as they went down.

Soon no Grey Warden abilities were needed to detect the darkspawn. The air reeked of them, heavy and putrid. Darkspawn grunts and shrieks grew louder, and soon they could see flickering light reflecting against the back wall. The sloping path curved sharply to the left, opening into a larger cavern that the villagers had been trying to excavate. Adara held up a hand to stop the others, lowered herself closer to the ground, and peeked around the corner.

"Bigger than the first lot, unfortunately. Maybe a dozen I can see, but a lot of the room is in shadow," she whispered. "Jowan and I will send fireballs. Then you two—" she gestured to Leo and Carver, "—start cutting them down before they can regroup."

"Right, got it. Chaos and death, coming up," Carver said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, clearly eager to be off. To Leo, he said: "Try not to 'forget' to count your kills this time, alright, mate? I can't gloat properly if I don't know how much I've beaten you by."

Adara ignored their banter and concentrated, her mind reaching out to touch the Fade. At first she just touched it, like fingers on a harp, then began pulling it towards her. Whispers grew louder in the back of her mind, though not as loud as the sound of a bright ball of fire igniting between her hands.

"Aim straight ahead when we round the corner," she said to Jowan. The light of the fires cast undulating shadows across his face, nearly concealing the motion of his quick nod.

Her hands were getting uncomfortably hot now, and there was no point in delaying any longer. Adara drew in a deep breath and stepped around the corner. The movement caught the attention of the nearest darkspawn, but she ignored the heads turning towards her. Adara pushed her hands out in front of her, launching the fireball straight ahead. It crashed into the middle of the darkspawn, flames exploding outwards with enough force to send the creatures flying. Jowan's fireball followed, and then Adara felt a rush of wind as the two warriors charged past.

The air was thick with the smell of burning flesh. The darkspawn shrieked with pain and anger but also with bloodlust, the shrieks amplifying as they echoed off the cavern walls. The twin fireballs had immediately killed the unluckiest among them, with the blasts knocking most of the rest off their feet. Some of them still had flames licking across their blistering skin as they struggled to regain their footing, but Carver and Leo made sure that most of them never succeeded.

"There's more!" Jowan shouted, confirming Adara's fears that there were more darkspawn in the shadows.

She reached for the Fade again, this time to summon her rock armor, before sprinting into the cavern proper with her staff in hand. Things were certainly devolving into chaos, the way most fights seemed to. A hurlock charged from the shadows to flank Carver, and he wasn't going to be able to turn and meet its blade in time. Adara swung her staff around, the dull stone on the end of it suddenly flickering with a green light.

The hurlock stopped abruptly, looking down with a howl as it began to turn to stone from the legs up. The howls went from angry to anguished as its flesh petrified into hard rock, and then they stopped entirely. Carver didn't waste the opportunity and swung his sword in a downward arc, cracking the stone hurlock into pieces.

"That is never going to get any less gross, no matter how many times I see it," Carver commented as the shards of stone turned back into flesh.

"You're welcome," Adara said.

"They've got a mage!" Leo shouted a warning.

Adara whipped around to see an emissary, an orange ball of fire growing larger between its hands. She whirled her staff around again, sending a bolt of energy arcing through the air. It struck the emissary in the chest, who fell backwards—and launched his fireball at the cavern roof. The fire exploded against the wooden beams holding up the ceiling. There was one horrible moment of stillness, in which they could only listen to the loud groans and cracks from the damaged beams, before the ceiling fell.

Then everything happened all at once. Carver dove for her, tackling Adara to the ground and pulling her against his chest, making his body a shield between her and the falling debris. Wheezing from having the wind knocked out of her, Adara wrapped one arm around Carver's neck and flung out her other hand above them. Her hand glowed blue before a thin barrier made of Fade-stuff bloomed from it, a shield for them both against the falling rocks.

She squeezed her eyes shut as the entire world seemed to crash around them.