The Calling

6

Bregan couldn’t be sure how much time passed in his cell. His mind was often clouded by a haze of pain, and he would drift in and out of sleep without any reference to mark whether a day had passed or a night. The hours had become fluid, lost to the darkness and despair he found himself submerged within.

Often when he awoke from his restless sleep, there would be a moment of confusion when he thought he might actually still be at the Grey Warden fortress in Montsimmard, that the ordeal of his captivity had all been but an unpleasant nightmare. A part of him waited for the familiar smells of the cypress and linen, searched for the faint moonlight coming through the shutters in his chambers, even though the rest of him knew better. Perhaps it was his mind hoping beyond hope, refusing to accept his circumstances.

It was strange to him, for if he had been asked he would have said he associated no fond memories with the fortress, despite it having been his home for so many years. Being part of the Grey Wardens was not something that had brought him joy. It had not been a misery, precisely, but rather a life he had endured. He had had not resisted the pull that had brought him down that path, but neither had he walked it willingly.

The idea that now his mind yearned to send him back there seemed to him almost like a sick joke.

Genevieve would have argued with him. She had always believed their position within the Grey Wardens to be a great honor. The day he had been made Commander of the Grey, her eyes had shone with quiet pride while he had somehow felt smothered, trapped. Still he had done it, assumed the command and the responsibilities that came with it while his sister shook her head at what she perceived as his obstinacy.

And somehow it had translated into popularity among the men he had commanded. Bregan had never seen himself as being particularly more worthy than any of them. They had all made the same sacrifice as he, all taken that foulness into themselves just as he had, to fight against a threat that most of humanity thought was long past. He sought out no distinction for himself, and readily passed on the accolades offered by his superiors to those men who were actually deserving of them, and for that the Grey Wardens had loved him.

Genevieve had never understood that, either. His sister was all stiffness and duty, and she erected a barrier between herself and those she commanded. Bregan was the only one she let past that, and there were times he knew she resented his popularity. She thought he sought it out, that he deliberately cultivated their loyalty, and refused to believe him when he said that wasn’t true.

Perhaps it was because that was what she would have done? Perhaps his sister had always craved popularity among the other Wardens, and would have gone to great lengths to get it if she thought it was possible to achieve. They both knew that would never be, however. People were like weapons to her, a means to an end. She preferred them to be equally hard, unyielding, and predictable, and was always surprised when they were anything but.

Knowing that she would need to carry on as Commander after him had been almost more difficult than any other reality visited upon him by the Calling. It would have killed Genevieve to see the men mourn, and to know that when her time came in the near future they would never mourn her in the same way.

The thought of his sister jarred him into the present. He’d dreamed of Genevieve as he slept, a haze full of pain and delirium, but even through it all he imagined she was out there calling his name and desperately searching for him in the utter darkness that had swallowed them all. A strange dream to be sure, but he knew well enough to consider the possibility that it might have been something more.

Had she followed him into the Deep Roads? Was she thinking to rescue him?

A panic gripped him. He opened his eyes and sat up sharply, fully expecting to find the darkness of his cell. Instead, however, he was greeted by light. A diffuse yellow glow permeated the chamber, almost smothered by the shadows but still enough to keep it from absolute darkness. The stench of corruption filled his nostrils once again, as if he were surrounded by meat on the verge of turning, but somehow it did not seem as potent as he remembered.

The humming sound, however, was stronger even than before. It was no longer something muted and distant; it was everywhere. It was behind the walls and under the floor; it filled the shadows and caressed his skin. There was a terrible beauty to it now, an awful yearning that pulsated within the sound, a tugging that pulled at the edge of his consciousness and yet frightened and nauseated him at the same time.

The humming had eclipsed any sense he had of the darkspawn. Any attempt he made to reach out with his mind to sense where the creatures were found only a wall of beautiful sound instead. Like a weed, it had insinuated itself into his consciousness, blocking out anything useful.

He was seized by the irrational impulse to scratch his hands across his face, to gouge away the flesh and bone and drag the humming out of his mind physically. The notion made him laugh, a mad giggle born of hysteria that was defeated almost before it made its way out of him.

“You hear it, do you not?” came the calm voice of the Architect, seated not five feet away from him on a rocky outcropping next to the wall.

Bregan was startled by the darkspawn’s presence, and uncertain how he could have missed it even in the dim light. Had it crept into the cell while his mind wandered? Had he slept, and not even been aware that he slept?

A single glowstone hung next to the creature, the source of the illumination, and its gnarled staff lay across its robed lap. He had the impression that the creature had been waiting there for some time. Watching him, perhaps? Or probing into his thoughts with its magic? There were spells that could do that, forbidden magic that he didn’t doubt in the slightest a darkspawn emissary might possess.

But if that were so, there was also probably nothing he could do. His thoughts would already have been violated, and his secrets stripped from him. He had already tried to escape, only to end up back where he began.

He shuddered, belatedly remembering that he was now mostly unclothed and yet covered in makeshift bandages over much of his chest and legs. He did not recall what had happened after he had been taken down by the rush of darkspawn attackers, had felt their teeth biting into his flesh. He was not even sure how he had survived.

His skin itched terribly underneath those bandages, but he resisted the urge to peel them off. A single tattered fur blanket had been provided to cover him, and he collected it around himself as he slowly sat up fully. The pain throughout his body was dull but insistent, as if his body protested against this unfamiliar movement. The sluggishness made him wary. There was a thickness to his blood, a deliberateness to his heartbeat that made him feel like something alien was crawling inside of him and sapping his strength. Just what had the darkspawn done to him?

“You may as well use what ever magic you have to pry open my mind, if you haven’t done so already,” Bregan growled. “I’m not going to tell you what you want to know.”

The Architect blinked slowly, registering surprise in those milky-white eyes that continued to stare so incessantly. “Even if I could do such a thing,” it said politely, its words clipped and even, “what makes you think that is the goal I seek?”

“Because that’s what you darkspawn do, isn’t it?” The words came out of Bregan as a croak, and his vision swam. He felt dizzy and groggy. The beautiful humming reached a crescendo, an orchestra of insistent sound that threatened to tear his mind apart. It crashed against him in multiple waves before finally receding. It took all his effort just to remain seated, sweat pouring down his forehead as his heart slowly thumped within his chest. “You dig … you search, for where they’re kept… .”

“The Old Gods,” the Architect offered.

Bregan nodded. The humming had withdrawn into the shadows again, but its power still made him shiver. The whispers inside that sound … if he paused, he was sure he could almost make out what they were saying. He was determined not to try. He covered his face with a hand, steadying himself. “You can’t fool me,” he gritted. “I know that’s what you want. What other reason could you even have to keep me here?”

The Architect peered at him closely. It reached up with a scarred, puckered hand and ran a finger thoughtfully along its chin. Bregan continued to sweat under this scrutiny, shaky and exhausted while simultaneously trying not to let the darkspawn see just how weakened he was. He had no idea if he was successful. Probably not very.

Slowly the emissary got up, its brown robes rustling softly. It used the blackened staff for support as it leaned in to study Bregan even more closely. He shuddered, revolted by the creature’s dead eyes. His flesh crawled and he wanted to pull away, but he couldn’t even summon the strength for that much.

“You did not answer my first question,” it said softly.

He cleared his throat and glanced at it, perplexed. “I don’t …”

The Architect straightened, rubbing its chin again in an oddly human gesture. Bregan noticed the number of pouches and odd devices hanging from the loose hemp rope tied around its waist. One of them looked like a petrified skull formed into some kind of amulet, the skull having once belonged to something vaguely reptilian. “I suggested that you heard the call. You do, do you not?” It seemed more intrigued now even than before. “In fact, I will wager that you hear it more clearly now than ever.”

“You mean the humming, the music.”

“The Old Gods beckon, as they always have.” The Architect turned and paced to the other side of the cell. The shadows cast on the walls by the glowstone danced ominously. “That is what you hear. To my people, it is a call that we cannot ignore. It whispers to our blood and compels us to seek the Old Gods out. We search and search for their prisons, and when we find one, we touch the face of perfection and thus desecrate it forever.”

The darkspawn hung its head. Because it was facing away from Bregan, he couldn’t see its expression properly, but he got the impression that the creature was filled with sadness, or perhaps regret. Could that be possible? The darkspawn had attacked all other life in relentless wave after wave, without mercy or quarter sought, for centuries beyond counting. Were they capable of regret? He had to admit that prior to meeting this par tic u lar one, he had assumed a large number of things about them that seemed to not be true. Just how not true remained to be seen.

“The face of perfection?” Bregan asked. “The Old Gods are dragons.”

The Architect chucked with amusement. “Is that all they are, human? Is that such a small thing, then? Are there so many such creatures in the surface lands that they are not something of wonder?”

It was, in fact, quite the opposite. Dragons had been hunted nearly to extinction, and in truth had only begun to reappear in recent years. Even then, the Old Gods were things of legend, ancient creatures that predated even the Tevinter Imperium and might have been considered myths if the fact that a great, corrupted dragon led the hordes during each of the Blights had not provided compelling evidence of their existence.

“I do not know what an Old God truly is,” the Architect admitted. The creature’s milky eyes stared far off into the distance, and Bregan realized it was listening to the humming. The sound rose as if in response, a song of beautiful whispers that caressed against Bregan’s mind and made him shiver. He clenched his teeth to keep it at bay and was only partially successful. “I have never seen such a creature in my lifetime. Nor do I know if doing so would be a good thing. All I know is that the call of the Old Gods is a thing of perfection.” It turned to look at Bregan again, its expression indiscernible but its tone soft and sad. “We are things of darkness, human. You know this better than any other might. To us, the call is the only light we shall ever know.”

He stared at the darkspawn, this creature with its diseased flesh and its razor-sharp teeth, its dead eyes and the black talons on the end of its spindly fingers, and he didn’t know how to respond. For a long minute they remained in silence, Bregan sitting and watching the emissary as it seemed lost in thought. He wondered if it wasn’t all too easy to start ascribing human motivations to it. It looked roughly humanoid, after all. To imagine that it might have feelings similar to those of a human would be a mistake. He had to remember that.

“Didn’t you say it compelled you?” he asked.

The Architect nodded sharply. “That it does. Most of my kind are helpless before the call. They search because they must.”

“Most of your kind,” Bregan repeated. “But not you?”

“Nor, I suspect, you.”

“I am not a darkspawn.”

The creature stepped forward again, its interest renewed. “The same taint runs in your blood as in ours, Grey Warden, yet in you its effects are diminished. The question that comes to my mind is whether you have always heard the call of the Old Gods, or has that only happened since the corruption’s advancement?”

“Advancement?” Bregan blinked in confusion.

The emissary gestured languidly toward him, and Bregan abruptly realized that it was pointing at his arms under the blanket. His throat became parch-dry as he brought them out and examined them more closely in the glowstone’s yellow light. They were half covered in dark blotches. At first, he wondered if that was some kind of injury, or perhaps a bloodstain. But then he noticed the texture of the skin within those discolored areas: rough and withered, just as darkspawn flesh was.

“We regenerate quickly,” the Architect explained in a neutral voice. “It is why we have never developed healing arts as your people have, I suppose. It seems that while the effects of the taint are slowed within you, they have advanced to the point where you have experienced this one benefit, at least.”

“Benefit,” Bregan exclaimed in horror. He dropped his arm out of the light, feeling his flesh crawl and bile rise up in his throat. He fought against the sudden urge to start ripping his own skin from his body.

The Architect reached out with a hand to comfort him, but he pulled away from it reflexively. He slammed up against the wall behind him, his breath coming in short and panicked starts. He wondered what the rest of his body under the blanket looked like. The itchiness he felt in his skin under those poultices, the thickness in his blood—was he covered in those blotches now? Was he slowly transforming into some kind of monster?

Is that what happened to Grey Wardens when they lived too long? When their resistance to the taint finally gave out once and for all? Had the very first Grey Wardens long ago discovered this horrible truth and devised the Calling so that future generations could avoid seeing it for themselves?

“I am sorry,” the Architect said, and for once Bregan believed it. It withdrew its offered hand and simply stared at him uncomfortably as he sobbed. The tears came explosively, in gasps, and they shook his whole body. He burned with shame to be crying in front of the enemy, but he just couldn’t help himself. The grief that welled up inside of him was overwhelming, compounded by the grogginess he felt and the maddening song that continued to tickle at the corners of his mind.

He had been called here by the Old Gods, too, he realized. It was their song that had lured him into the Dark Roads, that had told him his time was up. He was just the same as any of these darkspawn.

“I … only began to hear the humming recently,” he finally explained. His voice was almost a croak, barely audible, but the Architect listened with intent fascination. “Once a Grey Warden hears it, that’s when we go on the Calling. That’s when we go to our deaths.”

“An appropriate name, if an unjust end.”

“There’s never been anything just about it,” Bregan blurted out. “I never wanted this. I never wanted to become a Grey Warden at all.”

“No?”

“No.” He spat out the word, avoiding looking the darkspawn in the face. It was stupid of him to say such things to this creature. Did he think it would have sympathy for him? Was he looking for sympathy? Because if he was, down here in the Deep Roads wasn’t a good place to find it.

Almost belligerently, he found himself not caring. “I joined the Grey Wardens because I didn’t have a choice. The one who recruited me … he wouldn’t have taken my sister unless I went, too. He said I was the one he really wanted, despite the fact that it was her dream.” He felt ashamed at this strange need of his to explain, but he continued anyway. “I told him that she would push herself harder than any other recruit he could hope for, that she would be the greatest Grey Warden they’d ever known. But he didn’t care. He thought I would do better.”

The emissary tilted its head. It was a look Bregan had seen on insects, or even dogs that were bewildered by some odd activity of their master’s. He found it somehow pleasing that not everything the Architect did made him seem human. “That was a compliment, surely,” it offered.

“It was a cruel fate. Either I joined the order or my sister would have ended up a soldier somewhere. A member of some city watch, or perhaps a guardsman’s wife. And she would have been miserable, because becoming a Grey Warden was the only thing she’d ever wanted. I couldn’t do that to her.”

The confession left Bregan breathless, and he almost doubled over, shaking and weak. It was not as if his sister had never known this. They had been close their entire lives, and he had seen that knowledge deep in her eyes. If anything, it had made her more driven. They had never acknowledged that fact openly. It was never spoken of, never even alluded to despite the fact that they both knew the truth.

Some things, however, are easier to say in the shadows. Spoken here, they would never hurt Genevieve, and while it shamed him to admit, still it felt good. While every other part of him crawled with the taint, like he was some dirty and infested thing, a part of him deep down felt oddly liberated.

“You humans do strange things.”

He laughed bitterly at the darkspawn’s confusion, as honest as it appeared to be. “Yes, I suppose we do. I don’t suppose you have brothers and sisters?”

“We are brethren.” It blinked, its answer hesitant. “All of us, the same.”

“But you’re not the same.” Bregan fought back a surge of the distant humming once again, clenching his jaw from the effort. “You said yourself the Old Gods can’t compel you. You talk. You’re not like any darkspawn I’ve ever seen.”

The creature nodded, again hesitant, but said nothing.

“Why is that?” he insisted.

“I have asked myself this same question,” the Architect said. It paced away again, its tone becoming troubled. “Do you think I have not? The darkspawn have been born in these depths, one generation after countless others before it, and each of my brethren is no different than any that have come before. And then came I.” It drummed its long fingers along the staff, studying its own movement as if some kind of answer could be found therein. “Perhaps humans are similar? Perhaps from time to time one of you is born that is an aberration, different for no other reason than its pieces did not all fall neatly into place as they should?”

“Some would say it is the Maker’s will, but yes. We are the same way.”

The Architect did not immediately respond. Eventually it nodded, pleased. “Perhaps it is also similar among your kind that such aberrations rarely prosper. They are weak. Unfit. They are cursed by that which makes them different, and difference cannot be tolerated.”

Bregan sighed. “Yes. Sadly, that is also true.”

“But sometimes it is not a curse.” The Architect walked toward the cell’s door. Bregan couldn’t be certain, but he thought he detected a hint of steel coming into the creature’s normally cultured voice. “Standing on the outside allows one to see things from a new perspective, a perspective that the rest of its brethren lack.”

“You have that perspective, do you?”

“I do.” It opened up the cell door, which groaned in protest but appeared to be neither closed nor actually locked. “Would you come with me, Grey Warden?” it asked politely, turning back to regard Bregan where he sat against the wall.

“You aren’t worried I’ll try to get away?”

“I am worried for your sake. My ability to intervene when it comes to my brethren is limited, and regeneration will only do so much.”

“Meaning I could still die.”

There was a bitterness to Bregan’s tone that the darkspawn detected. He could see it in the way it looked at him guardedly. “Is that why you fled the first time?” Its tone was pointed. He supposed it wasn’t really asking a question so much as making an observation.

He sat there for a long minute, staring off into the shadows. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his skin felt clammy and all too warm. The faint humming call in the distance prickled against his thoughts, and he absently noted just how hungry he felt. His stomach groaned with its emptiness, and yet he couldn’t stand the idea of eating anything. The very thought of it made him want to retch.

The Architect continued to watch him, apparently having nothing better to do. He supposed there was really no point in avoiding such questions. “I had hoped I would be killed, yes,” he admitted. “That is why I went on the Calling in the first place, after all.”

“There are easier ways to die, human.”

His grimace deepened. He stood, reluctantly allowing the soiled furs to fall away from him and down to the floor, and looked down at his body. All he wore were his bloodstained and filthy smallclothes, and every part of his skin that wasn’t covered by the greyed cloth bandages was corrupted. It was like a network of black mold working its way across his entire body, and everywhere it touched he could feel a hot buzzing underneath the flesh. It was difficult to look at.

So instead he strode toward where the Architect waited, picking up the glowstone as he went. “I’ll try not to run away this time, then,” he grumbled. “But I’m not promising anything.” He felt exposed and too vulnerable, but tried not to let it show. Though the taint might have made its mark upon his flesh, he was far from weak.

The darkspawn said nothing and instead turned and went out into the hall. [Bregan followed. As he watched the back of the creature’s robes, its bald and scarred head, he wondered faintly if he shouldn’t simply try to kill it. He might not be able to escape, that was true, but perhaps he could take out this thing and what ever threat it represented. The fact that it was an emissary and thus commanded great magical power was one thing … the fact that it was also uniquely intelligent among the darkspawn, that was quite something else. It might even be his duty as a Grey Warden to kill it, just to be safe.

Yet he didn’t. He remained close behind the Architect, holding the glowstone out before him and watching the alien light it cast on the ancient dwarven halls. He wondered why the emissary wasn’t more concerned about its safety. Perhaps it had some sort of magical protection, something that would strike at Bregan if he so much as laid a finger upon it?

Or perhaps it simply knew better than he did that he wasn’t going to do that.

They walked for a short time through the ruins, all of it tainted almost to the point of being unrecognizable for the structure it once had been. Now it was a darkspawn nest, a thing full of black tendrils and sacs of corrupted flesh. The fact that he could no longer reach out with his mind and detect the creatures he knew to be out there disturbed him greatly. The humming surrounded him now, presenting a blank wall that his mind slammed up against.

It wasn’t long before the halls opened up into a vast chamber of some kind, the limits of which extended far beyond the reach of the glowstone. It was a point at which the dwarven stone carvings ended, that much he could see. The floors and walls were broken here, as if some force had simply torn the rest of it off and left it open to the underground beyond. Bregan could see natural rock, and the light gave it a sense of wetness, a great mass of something black and moist that filled up the shadows, with many things moving all around. In fact, the great mass of noise made him think of an insect hive. The smell of it was acrid and overwhelming. He couldn’t place what any of it might be, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

The Architect turned to him, its milky eyes wide and unreadable. “Do you see?”

“No, there’s not enough light. But I—”

His objection died on his lips as the emissary lifted up its dark staff. A deep purple glow surged forth from it, and suddenly Bregan saw the entire cavern clearly. It was vast, a great underground chamber that stretched out farther than he could possibly see, and it teemed with darkspawn. Thousands upon thousands of the creatures toiled, all so closely intermingled it seemed as if a mass of black maggots writhed in some festering carcass. The organic strands covered everything, great hives of it strewn like nerve clusters and dangling amid the horrific workers that moved among the shadows below.

Were they digging? He had the impression that the masses of them were all engaged in some sort of industry, all united in moving great portions of the rock out of the cavern and expanding it even further. Yet there were no sounds of tools crashing against stone, no hammering sounds or grunts of exertion. All he could hear was a rhythmic groan, a keening pitch that it seemed each of the darkspawn contributed to. The sound of it made his skin crawl, and he realized that the chorus in the distance responded to it. Like a cat that arched its back to meet a brushing hand it became ecstatic; it surged and almost overwhelmed his senses.

The world swayed around him and he felt himself stumble, only to have a strong hand grab his arm and steady him. His heart beat rapidly in his chest, and for a long minute the only other sound next to that powerful song was his own labored breathing. In and out. In and out, slow and controlled. He felt flushed, sweat pouring down his face.

He was ill. Perhaps he was dying.

“Be calm,” the Architect urged him. The purple glow from its staff ebbed and suddenly the vast cavern was cloaked in shadows once again. But now Bregan knew they were out there. He could feel them moving, their tainted forms bumping up against each other as they swarmed over the rock like ants. The fact that he couldn’t see them now almost made it worse.

He pulled away from the emissary’s touch, his breath rough as he leaned against the nearby rock wall for support. He stomach lurched, and had there been anything in it he might have vomited. As it was he heaved painfully a few times and fought to gain control over his revulsion. The smoothness of the rock, the coolness of its surface, felt good against his skin. He curled up against it, tried to ignore the blackness that trailed across it. Closing his eyes helped, if only for a moment.

“A curious reaction,” the Architect observed. Bregan opened his eyes and saw the creature watching him with clinical fascination. It made no move to approach him, content merely to let him convulse. Sweating and exhausted, he let himself slump down to a sitting position on the floor.

“There are so many,” he breathed. He really didn’t know what else he could say.

The Architect nodded solemnly. “The Old Gods call to them and so they search. They search because they have no choice. All who hear the call must obey, in the end.”

“Except you.”

“And you.” It inclined its head.

Bregan sat against the wall and tried to ignore the great, dark chamber that he knew was beside him. He wanted to retreat back to his cell, somewhere small and safe where he could pretend that there wasn’t a monstrous swarm all around him. Yet that, too, would be a weakness.

He wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaky hand. “So what is it you want from me, then?” he asked, his voice quavering. “You want me to help them? You want me to tell you where the Old Gods are, to speed this all along?”

“So you do know where they are.” The creature seemed intrigued, but not surprised.

He laughed, a bitter bark that devolved into a fit of mad giggling that only left him hoarse in the end. The emissary seemed unmoved by his mirth. “Are you saying you really didn’t know that? Isn’t that why you brought me here?”

The Architect lowered itself onto its haunches to look Bregan directly in the eyes. Its brown robes rustled around it, and it placed its staff gingerly down on the ground. He didn’t want to look the creature in the face, but he couldn’t help himself. Those milky, dead eyes commanded his attention. They seemed so oddly serene, almost sincere in their concern.

“I did not bring you here to begin the Blight,” it said carefully, emphasizing each word so there would be no misunderstanding. “The numbers of my brethren grow with each passing year, and given enough time they will find one of the ancient prisons. They will unlock it and the cycle will begin anew. This will happen whether you were to tell them where to look or not. I have no desire to see it happen sooner.”

Bregan was flabbergasted. For a moment he could almost ignore the incessant humming that threatened to crack open his head and crawl inside. He stared at the darkspawn in amazement. “Then what do you want?”

“I wish to end it.” The Architect stood and walked to the edge of the cavern, and stared out into it with eyes that Bregan was sure could see far better in the darkness than any human. “My brethren have been subject to this impulse since our creation. We rise to the surface and struggle to eradicate your kind, and each time you drive us back and we begin again. This will continue until one of us is victorious, yes? Until one of us is eradicated forever, if such a thing is even possible?” It turned and looked to Bregan, a cool intensity gripping its every word. “But what if it didn’t have to be this way?”

“What other option is there?”

The creature crossed the gap between them quickly, crouching down with a look of such fervent excitement that Bregan almost recoiled. It clutched at his hand, holding it firmly. “In your blood lies the key,” it whispered. “Yours is the middle ground between human and darkspawn, the path to true peace.”

Bregan stared at the Architect, not quite certain he understood. “Middle ground?”

“Your kind will always be at risk from mine so long as our taint spreads and infects,” it insisted. “And my kind will always seek to destroy yours so long as the call of the Old Gods continues.”

“But I don’t understand. There’s no way those things can change.”

“Can they not?” It seemed surprised. “You are human, and yet you are immune to the taint.”

Bregan held up his arm. In the soft light of the glowstone, the trail of corruption along his flesh was only too evident. “Not anymore.”

“You are not dying. You are changing.”

The word sent a shiver down his spine. The creature said it as if this should not be alarming in the slightest, but the truth was that not thinking about what was happening to him was the only way he could keep from going mad. His mind shied away from images of those poor fools that had fallen sway to the darkspawn’s plague. Those that did not suffer an agonizing death at the hands of the sickness became ghouls, beings whose shattered minds were subject to control by the darkspawn. They became pawns, even servants, until finally they withered away and perished.

Would he begin to obey eventually, just as they did? Would he be in that cavern soon, digging along with all the other creatures, mingling his flesh with theirs? “It … it doesn’t matter”—his words stumbled together—“there’s no way that the rest of humanity could become immune. Not unless they became Grey Wardens.”

“Yes.” The Architect nodded as if this point should be obvious.

Another shiver ran down Bregan’s spine. Sweat ran into his eyes, and for a moment he felt faint. “But becoming a Grey Warden means drinking darkspawn blood. Most of those who do it die. Only a few of us ever succeed.”

“Yes”—it nodded again—“many of your kind would very likely perish.” Before he could protest, the creature raised its hand. “You exist halfway between human and darkspawn. If the rest of your kind could be made as you are, they would have no reason to fear my brethren.”

“Other than the fact that the darkspawn keep trying to kill us?”

“That, too, would need to end. Humans and darkspawn must meet each other in the middle.” It paused and studied Bregan carefully, as if watching for a reaction. Oddly, he found himself having very little reaction at all. He sat against the wall, listening absently to the droning hum that seemed to vibrate inside the very stones, and waited for the sense of horror to come. It didn’t.

Shouldn’t it? Unless he was somehow mistaken, the Architect was suggesting unleashing the darkspawn taint on humanity at large, putting each and every human through the same kind of torturous test that allowed one to become a Grey Warden … those that survived, anyhow. Which wouldn’t be many. There was a reason only the strongest and hardiest were chosen to join the order. Few others had any hope of surviving the pro cess.

Was such a thing even possible? Should he not be angrily demanding answers from the creature? Part of him said he should be horrified and enraged, and that he should find out the details behind this plan. He imagined it involved some brand of darkspawn magic, but what, exactly? Shouldn’t he want to know?

As he sat there, chin on his chest and listening to his own hard and ragged breathing, he found that he didn’t. Was it not the job of the Grey Wardens to seek an end to the darkspawn threat? And when had they ever actually been close to succeeding at that goal? Each time the Blight came, it brought with it a war that came that much closer to wiping out humanity altogether. Each time the world had to scramble to save itself, and each time it had barely managed to succeed.

How many more times could it do so? Would the next Blight be when the darkspawn finally succeeded in wiping out all life from the surface of Thedas? How many would die then?

Bregan suddenly recalled the man who had inducted him into the order. Kristoff had been a grizzled and uncompromising warrior, all hard edges and frowns. He had been Commander of the Grey for many years before succumbing to the taint. Bregan had accompanied him down to Orzammar, feasted with him at a table full of boisterous and drunken dwarves, and then watched him walk out into the Deep Roads.

At the time, Bregan had been overcome with grief. For all his taciturn manner, Kristoff had been his only real friend within the order. He’d allowed his student to care for his horse and sweep his quarters, knowing that Bregan would rather do such tasks than carouse with the other recruits. He’d played queens with Bregan on a dusty old board and sparred with him indoors when it rained. It was Kristoff’s recommendation that named Bregan as Commander of the Grey after him, despite Genevieve’s unspoken jealousy at the promotion, and Bregan had accepted it only because Kristoff had demanded he do so.

What he remembered of his grey-haired mentor that final night, however, was the man’s relief. While it had been all Bregan could do to choke back embarrassing tears, Kristoff had been calm and composed. The sense of serenity around him was palpable, all the grumbling tension that was present for all the years Bregan had known him completely gone. He’d walked into the shadows of the Deep Roads, head held high as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and stopped only to give his former student a few final words of advice.

“You will guard them,” he’d said, “and they will hate you for it. Whenever there is not a Blight actively crawling over the surface, humanity will do its best to forget how much they need us. And that’s good. We need to stand apart from them, even if they have to push us away to make us do it. That is the only way we can ever make the hard decisions.”

At the time Bregan had thought, What hard decisions? There had been no Blight in centuries, and at worst the order dealt with darkspawn raids that popped up on the surface from time to time. The hardest decisions a Commander of the Grey was forced to make were which recruits could be given the test to join the order. It was never an easy thing, as even the hardiest of them often perished, but it seemed hardly worth Kristoff’s words.

The Grey Wardens watched and waited as they always had, but now the order was but a shadow of what they had once been during the wars of long ago. Late at night in the quiet of his cell, Bregan had allowed himself the private luxury of believing that the days of the darkspawn were well and truly done.

At least, he had believed that until now.

“You say nothing,” the Architect murmured uneasily.

“What should I say?”

The emissary gathered its robes closer around itself and circled Bregan warily. It seemed to be watching for some sign, its pale eyes intent. “My experience with humans is limited,” it admitted. “What you will or will not do at any given moment is a mystery to me. Your kind is often irrational. Yet I was expecting … anger, perhaps?”

“And what am I feeling now, do you think?”

It blinked. “I would say that you are sad.”

Bregan felt leaden. His thoughts became fuzzy, and for a brief moment it seemed as if the mad humming was a world away. He simply sat there in the quiet shadows, sweat running down his moist and corrupted skin as the robed darkspawn looked down upon him. How very unreal this all was, somehow. “Can you do it?” he finally asked. “This thing you plan. Can you actually do it?”

“Not alone.” The Architect offered no further elaboration, and he wasn’t sure that he would get any even if he pressed. Part of him wondered, in a much removed fashion, if perhaps he should attack this darkspawn after all. If he had thought the creature dangerous earlier, now it might possibly be the most dangerous thing in the entire world.

He did nothing. He sat there and stared down at the cracked floor, chipped away by an eon of wear. Once there had been stone tiles there, delicately inlaid with a geometric design typical of the dwarves. He’d seen something much like that within a bathhouse in Orzammar. Perhaps this had once been a similar place? He tried to imagine it filled with bright lamps and steamy tubs and curvaceous dwarven noble-hunters giggling behind their fans. Instead he conjured only images of corrupted flesh and pools of stagnant foulness. A cancer had taken over this place, a dank sickness that grew in secret until it spilled out onto the surface.

That was the truth, wasn’t it? The world was sick. Since their inception, the Grey Wardens had fought back the symptoms time and time again. But they had never defeated the disease. Maybe the time had come for a more radical treatment.

The Architect beckoned to him with a black and withered hand. “Come with me, Grey Warden.” It did not wait to see if he followed, but Bregan did not hesitate this time. Groaning with effort, he pulled himself up off the floor and stumbled after the emissary as it walked away from the cavern and went back the way they’d come.

They didn’t return to the cell, however. They spent a fair amount of time crossing a maze of passages, some small, others huge and supported by crumbling arches that Bregan could barely see the tops of. He quickly lost track of where they headed, doing his best to fight against the gnawing weakness inside him and to keep the emissary within range of the glowstone’s light. For all the fact that it didn’t seem to exert itself, it moved so quickly he began to fear that he might actually get left behind.

Twice they encountered darkspawn. Once it was but a handful of the short genlocks. The second time it was an entire group of hurlocks, one of them a powerful alpha, armed and armored in metal that glistened like dark obsidian. Bregan tensed both times, expecting to be attacked, but the creatures did nothing more than make wary hisses and keep their distance. At first he thought it was him that they reacted to, an enemy Grey Warden in their midst. But then, as he watched their reactions more closely, he realized the truth.

It was the Architect they feared.

The emissary paid them little heed, merely holding out his gnarled staff threateningly as he passed among them. They backed off, making angry thrumming noises from deep in their throats, like dogs confronted with a clearly superior hound and salvaging what little of their dignity they could as they pulled their tails between their legs. Bregan was amazed, and found himself disconcerted to be so universally ignored.

Did they see him as a darkspawn, now? So full of corruption running through his veins that he wasn’t even distinguishable as a Grey Warden? That idea disturbed him far more.

After a time, Bregan began to perceive that they were moving upward. They climbed a long flight of stairs, an ascent that left him gasping and shaking with exhaustion, and then entered a long tunnel that seemed to slope toward the surface. The stone there was mostly still free from the darkspawn taint, and he began to wonder just how far they had traveled. He had the impression that the dwarven ruins remained unbroken around them, that they had not moved into natural caverns, but who could truly say how far such ruins spread? Some of the oldest thaigs, according to the dwarven Shaperate, had been larger than Orzammar itself. Now they were all part of the festering underground world occupied by the darkspawn.

He fell into a daze, focusing more on putting one foot in front of the other and keeping up with the Architect—who said nothing. Their travel was utterly silent, with only the beautiful strains of the humming tugging at Bregan’s senses. He tried to tune it out. When he finally started to wonder just where it was they were going, he resigned himself to the fact that there was no point in asking. The Architect was moving and he was following.

Then the emissary finally stopped, abruptly enough that Bregan almost ran into it. He looked up and saw that the tunnel had come to an end. They were at an entrance of some kind that opened up into a larger natural cavern beyond. What little he could see with the glowstone told him this was natural rock, mostly untainted. The faintest breeze crawled across his skin, cool and welcoming, and only belatedly he realized that it signified fresh air. They were near the surface.

The Architect held up a calming hand as he spun about. “It is not as close at it seems,” it cautioned in its usual calm and civilized tone. “The ducts that still exist here bring the air down from the surface. But it would be a simple matter to reach the surface from here.”

Bregan stared at the creature suspiciously. “And why did you bring me here?”

“If you had attempted to flee again when we were still among my brethren, they would have stopped you. They listen to me at times because they fear me, but I am not the same as them and they know this.”

It took a moment for the idea to sink in. He was exhausted, his legs burning now that he was standing still. The fiery itch underneath his flesh clawed at his tendons. The Architect turned and stared out into the cavern, the glowstone highlighting every fold of the withered flesh on its skeletal face. If Bregan were to guess, he’d have suspected that it felt pensive. “You want me to flee now?”

“Is that still what you wish?”

“Would you let me go?”

“I would.”

That answer stumped him. He looked out into the shadowed passages where the Architect stared and wondered what the darkspawn saw there. Bregan had come to the Deep Roads to die. If he left, he could still do that. He could continue his Calling, as planned.

But if all he wanted to do was die, then there were simpler ways to do it. Even the Architect had told him that, and it was true. So perhaps he didn’t want to die. Perhaps he could go to the surface, if it was truly reachable. He could warn the Grey Wardens about what this emissary planned, give them time to find a way to stop it …

… but should he?

Ignoring the idea that he would be attacked the moment he showed himself on the surface, his skin as corrupted as any mad ghoul’s, it occurred to him that perhaps there was actually something to the emissary’s plan. The death of so many was a horrific thought, yes, but if it meant survival? Stopping the Blight was a Grey Warden’s true duty, and even if Bregan had never wanted that onus originally, it was all he truly had left now.

“This thing you have planned,” he began slowly.

“Yes?”

“You aren’t just unleashing something on humanity? You said that the darkspawn needed to meet in the middle as well, yes? You must have a plan for them, too.”

“We can speak on that, if you wish.”

“But the idea is to end the Blights? Forever, so they never happen again.”

The emissary turned and regarded Bregan for a moment, its expression unreadable. The large pale eyes blinked and it leaned heavily on its gnarled black staff. He ground his teeth, wondering if maybe this wasn’t the creature’s plan all along. Take him down into the depths, let the corruption gnaw away at his sanity until finally … what? Until he finally admitted that maybe the Grey Wardens never had all the answers? They did what they could to protect the world from the unthinkable, but possessed no solution save the constant sacrifice of young souls to the taint? Nothing Bregan had been taught could ever have prepared him for this.

“That is the idea, yes,” the Architect murmured.

“And what do the other darkspawn think about this? Do they agree with you?”

“They cannot. I must make this decision for them.”

Bregan found himself slowly nodding. He looked out into the cavern and felt another brush of cool air across his skin. It would feel good to be on the surface, he thought. By now there would be snow on the ground, and the icy breath of the wind would be welcome against his flushed, burning skin.

And then he thought of Genevieve, his white-haired sister with her stern glare. He remembered his dreams and wondered if she was indeed searching for him. If he went to the surface, she might even find him. And what would she say, if she saw him now?

“Let’s talk about it, then.” The words spilled out of him unbidden, yet as soon as they were said Bregan knew that it could be no other way. The whispers within the distant humming grew louder and more insistent, calling out his name from the shadows and tugging at his mind.

And he ignored them.

The Architect bowed low, respectfully, and then gestured back the way they had come. Bregan adjusted what little clothes he had left and began to stride purposefully down the passageway, back into the depths, and this time the darkspawn followed him.