One

The curved lines of the vallaslin that adorned his forehead and chin, as seen reflected in the puddle of the murky, blighted water, looked blacker than ever and now felt blacker than ever.

Halvas spun the dagger in his palm, the keen blade nearly whistling as it rotated in the chilled midnight air, as he considered whether to use its edge to carve the flesh from his face, to peel his skin back, to force himself not to blink as the blood ran across his eyes in sheets, to grit his teeth and bear the pain as the price for his ignorance and the ignorance of his people, all in order to rid himself of the corrupted markings that he had once wore with pride but that now only filled him with disgust.

He had chosen to wear the markings of Ghilan'nain, the flowing lines curved upward like the horns of the halla she had created and for which he had been named.

Now, as he looked upon the reflection of his face in that blighted pool, black and stinking with foulness but not yet so far gone to rot as to not be able to hold the light of the moon on its surface, all he could see in those lines were the twisting veins of blight that snaked along the walls of Weisshaupt, the corrupted veins of a corrupted goddess who wielded that corruption as a weapon and sought to remake the world with it.

As Halvas contemplated mutilating his face in a vain effort to separate himself from her, of what she had willingly embraced, his hand was stayed by the recognition – or was it horror? – that perhaps he was not so different, that his revulsion at the goddess was merely a reflection of a sudden revulsion in himself, brought to light by the massacre he had just walked away from.

After all, decades ago he had willingly put the cup of black, blighted blood to his lips and drank of it, in order to gain its power.

The Wardens would claim it was a righteous power, a sacrifice, to willingly take in the darkness in order to have the strength to combat it. But the undeniable truth was that there was power, too, in the taint. Once changed, once transformed, once corrupted, there was a power that took root, intertwined in their blighted blood, that set them apart from otherwise normal men and women. When the battle grew furious, when wounds opened and blood spilled, when they tread into places where there was no light and no warmth, that power drove them, sustained them, took hold of them.

Whenever Halvas gave into that side of him, when he allowed the monster, the horror that dwelt within him to come out, he left destruction in his wake, too.

The Dalish elders were wrong. The stories the hahrens told were wrong. The teachings of the People, the history they searched for and clung to and bled to recover, those had all been proved false in an instant the goddess came to Weisshaupt in a sucking, suffocating cloud that bore the blight to the doorstep of the Wardens.

He had heard the booming voice that echoed throughout the fortress. He had felt her words reverberating in his head, tremors threatening to shake his skull until it cracked and shattered. He had felt her inside of him, as if she had wormed inside of his very veins, writhing within his blood.

Whether he massacred his own face to try to rid himself of the black tattoos that marked him, it wouldn't matter. Ghilan'nain, the mother of the halla, the mother of the blight, she was already permanently inside him, he knew. Even if he could erase the ink below his skin, he could not relieve himself of his blackened blood, where she resided not just in spirit but in form.

Hallas slipped his knife back into the sheath and stood, tearing his face away from the tainted puddle and the reflection of the fool and monster he saw within it.

The other Wardens were trickling by one by one, survivors from the destruction of Weisshaupt, making their way to the rally point at the old fort in Lavendel on the outskirts of the Hossberg wetlands. They trudged forward, wounded and weary, never looking back to the south and toward the impregnable fortress of the Grey Wardens that had not only been broken, but now sat consumed by the blight that their order was sworn to fight unto their deaths.

Weisshaupt had fallen. Hundreds had been killed. And yet, these forsaken wanderers, refugees, Halvas among them, had lived.

In war, victory.
In peace, vigilance.
In death, sacrifice.

All of them on the road to Lavendel had failed that oath in full tonight.

Halvas had served the Wardens for nearly thirty years now and never had he suffered a defeat so devastating and so complete as this before. Yes, when the walls were breached and the archdemon had smashed the fortress, he had led the charge to the postern gate, hacking through the horde of misshapen darkspawn. He had secured an escape route, and many had survived because of it. As the Wardens trudged past, he recognized many of the faces of those who still drew breath. He had Joined many of them, trained many of them, bled alongside many of them.

As they walked past and saw him there, resting by the roadside, they tossed him small nods, appreciation for their lives, all they could muster in lieu of speech, the pain too close yet for words.

"Joiner, you made it."

Halvas looked up to see the young woman approaching, her long dark hair spattered with darkspawn filth. Her dark eyes, usually full of light and joy, were tonight dark with sorrow.

"Greta," Halvas said, dipping his head in greeting. She had come from Tevinter, a non-mage from a mage family, who had more or less been outcast from Minrathous when she didn't manifest magic. She had come to the Wardens seeking a higher calling, a purpose from a society that had none for her. She was the only one of four he had given the chalice to that night that lived to see morning. Recruits died during the Joining, that was unavoidable, but something about that night in particular, that she had drank from the cup last and that she had been the only one to pass its test had felt like a sign to him, that there was something more to her, something that lay beyond what he had at first seen in her initiation. She was special to him, because of it. "It's good to see you."

"We wouldn't have survived, if not for you," Greta said. Her hands were still trembling, which she tried to hide by squeezing the grip of her sword at her hip. He didn't fault her for fear. Every Warden who lived to see tomorrow should be afraid of what they had witnessed this night. To be anything but would be unnatural. "When you went back inside the gate, I wasn't sure that you still lived."

Once he had secured the gate, Halvas had gone back to cover their retreat along with some of the other senior Wardens. They had locked their shields and held the line for nearly an hour as the stones of Weisshaupt rattled apart underfoot. Then they had seen the giant boils of blight swelling, consuming everything before them, a massive wall of corrupted, rotting flesh that swallowed the fortress like lava running from the volcanic peaks in the north of the Anderfels. Halvas had blown his horn to signal a rapid retreat and then turned and bolted for the gate.

Eirik. Beth. Durgin. Millie. None of them, as far as he knew, had made it out.

"Have you seen the First Warden?" Halvas asked.

"You didn't hear?" Greta asked. "Rook punched him. Knocked him out. That idiot. He always has acted first and thought later, ever since his Joining."

Thorne had joined the order about the same time as Greta, Halvas remembered, and the two were on friendly terms, even if Greta was calm-headed and obedient while Thorne was impatient and rebellious. Halvas knew of the one they called Rook – and the fact that he was more often than not in trouble with command – even if he didn't know him personally.

"Then the First Warden is dead?" Anyone who was left behind in Weisshaupt must be dead. Nothing could have survived what he saw.

"I don't know," Greta said. "I was told he battled his way across the fortress and fought the archdemon. He must have killed it. You felt it, right?"

Halvas nodded. Everyone had felt it, the presence of the archdemon, even before it had cut through the fog and laid waste to the fortress. It was a pressure inside his skull, an overwhelming presence and voice that echoed across and through the taint. Razikale. The emanations had formed the name in their heads, beckoning outward to the darkspawn and, by extension, to the Wardens, who shared their blight.

And then, in the middle of the battle, that voice, that power that pressed and pushed through the taint, it burst, a screaming, a shriek across their consciousness as it was destroyed. Someone had killed Razikale. It was impossible to tell who had actually landed the killing blow – any Warden could do it, any Warden would do it, as duty demanded to end a Blight – but the First Warden, if he had survived the initial assault, would have had first rights to the kill by virtue of his position.

"Who's in charge then?" Halvas asked.

"Don't know," Greta said with a tired shrug. "You?"

Halvas might have snorted or laughed, if the mood were anything but dire. He was one of the most senior Wardens by time – twenty-eight years since his Joining – but he had never chased a command or title. He preferred to serve where it mattered, in recruiting, in training and in walking in the blighted places where no normal man willingly would.

"Joiner" they called him, for he had successfully brought eighty-seven recruits through their Joinings, with a survival rate of just under three in four. They called him "Whetstone," for the way he honed those he joined into true Wardens ready to serve. "Blightseer," some named him, for his ability to feel out corruption and trace it to its source, even when it wasn't readily visible to the naked eye.

They called him "Steelshield" for the way he stood behind his kite in defense against the blight, or "Blackblade" for the color of his sword as it bathed in tainted darkspawn blood. Others still named him "Elfhorn," for the low, clear call of his Dalish marpelwood horn that echoed the cry of the halla.

There were few who called him by his given name and none left who knew him as Halvas of Clan Ista, for his people of the Hunterhorn Mountains, whom he had separated from nearly three decades ago.

He was known and respected among the Wardens of the Anderfels, but that was the extent of his influence in the order, by his own choosing. He was not afraid to lead in battle, or to take command when duty required, but he was better used in the field in service of his oath than in Weisshaupt tending ledgers and letters, placating and politicking.

"No," he reaffirmed, even though he knew Greta was only teasing him. "But I do have a task for someone trustworthy, if you're willing."

"Anything, Joiner," Greta answered dutifully.

"Find a safe place, set a camp, light a large fire and gather any Wardens you can," he said. "It is still several days walk to Lavendel and the darkspawn might be pursuing us. We'll find strength in numbers."

"I will see it done, Joiner," Greta said, with a discipline that would make any teacher proud. She had always been a good student, sharp and skillful, willing to listen and willing to learn. "And what about you?"

"I'll see if I can find any stragglers," Halvas said. The search would keep him alone, for a time, where he needed to be right now.

"Joiner," Greta said, a note of concern in her voice as she sensed the woe in his. "Are you okay? This, elven god, Ghilan'nain–"

"Yes," Halvas interrupted before she could go further. As a human, not one of the People, Halvas knew she couldn't truly understand, even though she meant well. Halvas couldn't even yet understand as he grappled with history he had been told by his teachers against the irrefutable evidence of his own eyes and ears. There were some burdens that needed to be carried alone, even if others offered to share the load.

"Okay," Greta said, although the bend of her brows and the curl of her lips suggested that she didn't believe him. She never could hide her concerns well. "I'll see you in Lavendel, then."

"Creators guide you," he might have told her in parting a day ago. But now, the sentiment was poisoned, the words corrupted. Instead, he only gave her a nod of approval, and she turned to continue along and do her duty.

When she had gone, Halvas turned himself back in the direction of Weisshaupt and began walking, to point any wayward Wardens toward the rally, to Greta and the camp she would set.

There were few to be found as he walked alone in the darkness. Either those who survived had outpaced his late exit from the lost battle, or they never escaped at all. The moon has crossed its crest in the height of the sky and was now beginning to descend. Morning would break in a few hours. If anyone hadn't made it at least this far away by now, they were never coming, he knew.

He was about to turn back when one more figure in the distance caught his eye, walking slowly toward Lavendel. Halvas stopped and put his arm up to wave them down. They spotted him and turned slightly in the dark toward him. As the figure grew closer, Halvas recognized him as he dragged his warhammer behind him through the dirt. He was spattered in blood, both red and black, and was wheezing. His brow showed fresh claw marks, as blood trickled down his forehead and across his face like grim war paint.

"Ivon," he said to the dwarf as he dragged himself closer, the short, dark-skinned, bearded Warden stopping and leaning heavily on the handle of his hammer as if it were a cane and he an old man. Ivon wasn't old, in the sense that normal people got old, but he was old in his days as a Warden, like Halvas. He was past his twenty-fifth year, and much of that time had been hard years spent underground in the long-lost passages of the Deep Roads that snaked under the Anderfels.

"Steelshield," the dwarf said, his voice ragged and grumbling, words spoken with great effort. He was clearly hiding more injuries that Halvas couldn't see in the dark. "Ancestors be praised, at least they didn't get all of us."

"Is there anyone behind you?" Halvas asked, looking over the top of his head into the darkness toward Weisshaupt.

"No one," the dwarf said, shaking his head, choosing not to speak the word "alive," although Halvas understood his meaning. His eyes clenched hard, his mouth twisted and his neck bent to the side as if he felt a sudden wince of pain lance through him. "I stayed as long as I could, longer than I should have, probably."

"Same," Halvas said as he stepped to the dwarf's side and turned, putting his back to the ruin of Weisshaupt and once more heading for Lavendel. "Retreat isn't in the blood of old timers like us, is it?"

"You'd think we'd be wiser after all this time," Ivon said with a cough that was wet and barking, as if he had blood in the top of his lungs. He must have taken some kind of blunt blow to the chest, an ogre or hurlock hammer or something. "Nope. Still as stubborn and stupid as a couple freshies."

Ivon coughed hard again, this time actually spitting up blood, as Halvas had suspected. He wiped the back of his forearm across his mouth and swore. "How many made it out?"

"Too few," Halvas said, not knowing exactly how many, but knowing that the casualties at Weisshaupt were catastrophic. "I saw a few. Beckett. Jaynie and Rhodri. Greta."

"They got Janos," Ivon said. "Stayed behind to bar the doors. Damn fool, a damn fool who saved dozens, myself included."

In death, sacrifice, Halvas recited in his head, knowing that Ivon no doubt was thinking the same.

They walked in silence for a long while, Halvas slowing his gait to that of his fellow senior Warden, their slow march punctuated only by Ivon's bloody coughs. As they walked, the dwarf kept grimacing, shutting his eyes hard and shaking his head. After a while, he began to hum quietly to himself, quiet and low, barely audible even in the silence of the night. He would start, catch himself, stop, grimace, walk some more and then start again, and then shake his head in frustration.

"This Blight. It feels wrong," Ivon finally said to break their long silence. "I was nowhere near Ferelden during the Fifth, but I still felt it, same as you. But this, something's not right."

"The darkspawn that attacked Weisshaupt, they weren't right," Halvas agreed. "They felt… old."

"And empty," Ivon added. "Without the rage, the hunger, the desperation of darkspawn. They just, were. Raw, empty shells of what darkspawn should be, if that makes any sense."

"It does," Halvas said.

He had felt the same thing. When the fortress had come under attack, when the darkspawn had flooded over the walls and broken through the gates, as he cut them down with sword and axe and bow, he could feel them, but they felt foreign compared to the darkspawn he had known and fought for his entire life as a Warden.

The First Warden had been convinced that it was a Blight, like the five that had come before it. The Wardens knew how to battle a Blight, hard lessons learned over more than a thousand years of victory, vigilance and sacrifice. The Wardens would marshal their forces and set forth into the field to push back the horde, hunt the archdemon and kill it.

But the horde had come to them. It wasn't genlocks and hurlocks and shrieks and ogres like they knew. It was darkspawn, that was irrefutable, but they looked as if they were molded from wet clay, a work-in-progress, the shape of the darkspawn and the blight that they knew – but different, primordial, incomplete and yet somehow, even more virulent and terrifying.

And while there was an archdemon, it wasn't the corrupted dragon that drove it forward. No, it was a goddess, an elven goddess, his goddess, who was not what the stories the Dalish told said she was. He could sense her, feel her too, within the taint. She was not divine. She was corrupted, just like the darkspawn. Just like him. She was not a creator. She was a destroyer. And she had nearly destroyed the Grey Wardens in one swoop.

Halvas wore her markings on his face. The elders tattooed his flesh in her honor. And she had descended on Weisshaupt, sicked her pets on them, and tried to kill him. She was not a goddess, not like the Dalish said she should be.

Everything was wrong, not just the darkspawn.

"Steelshield," the dwarf added in a low voice, quiet, as if to keep others from hearing it even though they were alone on the night-blackened steppe. "If I tell you something, will you keep it to yourself, old man to old man?"

"Of course."

"After the battle…" Ivon started, haltingly, pausing a long time before he found the words and continued, "There's been a… sound. Quiet at first, barely there. But once I heard it, once I listened for it, it got louder. It's low and deep, thrumming. I covered my ears and it was still there, loud as ever. Now, I can't not hear it."

Ivon stopped, resting his hammer down in front of him as he straightened, craned his head up toward the sky and then closed his eyes. His head turned, his ears rotating as if he was listening for something, even though the barren Anders plain was quiet around them.

"I thought I had more time. But a second Blight in my lifetime? And that archdemon. It roared and it felt like my head was splitting open. Maybe it did. Maybe he got in there. For good." Ivon coughed and spat blood. "Shit…"

"Ivon," Halvas said, not sure what else he could say.

He knew. Ivon knew. Every Warden knew, eventually. If you lived long enough, there was a time that you sought out the old Wardens to ask about it. It was the last secret the senior Wardens kept from the younger ones. It was the final tenet of service, of duty, the last unspoken line of the oath they all took before lifting the cup to their lips and drinking.

Join us as we carry the duty that can not be forsworn.

"What about you?" Ivon asked. "You've been in longer than me, Steelshield."

Halvas looked at his dwarf friend, his bloody and scarred face, a tapestry earned over decades of loyal and faithful service. It was not so unlike his face, the gnarled pink and brown and gray fissures in his flesh that danced within and around the dark lines of his vallaslin. In the same way one could count the rings of a cut tree to determine its age, a Warden's scars told of his time in the order. Not even the best fighters could avoid claw and tooth and barbed blade for their entire lives.

Ivon's eyes were dark, sad, filled or drowned with the knowing. Once a Warden began to hear that sound, hear the music that lay deep within the taint, behind the sounds of darkspawn and fellow Wardens always on the edge of your consciousness, there was no turning back. The music, the music called you, called all of them eventually. A Warden might try to ignore it for a time, to push it out of their head, to do whatever they could to not hear it, but eventually it would grow until there was room for nothing else in their mind.

It was the final evolution of the taint, when the sickness finally overtook them and the price for the power that they stole came due. When it came, it was time for the Warden to embark upon their last journey, their last mission, to bring their service and their oath to a close. The only thing that lay on the other side of that calling was corruption, madness, and servitude to the blight.

In death, sacrifice, because the Wardens knew better than anyone in Thedas that there were things worse than death in this broken and blackened world.

He could not say how long it might be for Ivon. Days. Weeks. Months maybe, if his will was strong and his fortitude stout. All Wardens lived on the borrowed time of the taint, but now, Ivon's time was up.

Halvas couldn't be sure whether he saw fear in the dwarf's eyes as he recognized his own end on the horizon, or was it merely that he sought recognition from a fellow Warden at arms, from a friend, to acknowledge that he had served and served well, to go into that final march into darkness with the assurance that the life that he had given to the Wardens was worth something.

It was.

Halvas had to believe that, more now than ever.

"Yes. I hear it too."

The thrumming in his head seemed to rise in volume as the words crossed his lips, a crescendo, like the horns at the gates of Weisshaupt, blaring into the sky, announcing the return of traveling Wardens to their ancestral home.

The taint now called him home.