Their weapons out and ready, they edged forward carefully. It was not long before they came to an area where much of the passage walls had collapsed, revealing caves beyond. There were more underground passages than the ones they walked in, it seemed. Everything was coated in black fungus, and the smell grew increasingly more potent, more rancid. Dead maggots littered the floor amid bones and pieces of armor.
The skeleton of a dwarf lay against the wall. He still wore a rusty breastplate and a large helmet that covered most of his skull. It seemed as if he had merely sat down to rest, or to contemplate his death in these roads so far from his home.
“What’s that?” Maric said curiously, approaching the skeleton. These were the first bones they had seen so far that actually indicated that anything other than monsters had once moved through these passages. Katriel wondered why the body would have been left undisturbed, if it had died here. There seemed to be no shortage of creatures in these parts willing to feed on corpses. Or that was her assumption.
“Be careful,” Katriel warned him. “The Veil is thin in places like this, and it could attack you.” Wherever there had been a great deal of death the Veil became thin, allowing spirits and demons to cross over from their realm. They hungrily possessed anything alive, or that had once been alive. This was where tales of walking corpses and skeletons had come from, spirits driven mad to find themselves in a body devoid of the life they craved. She had never seen one herself, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.
Maric slowed his approach and poked the skeleton’s helmet carefully, and exhaled in relief as it did nothing. Then, his eyes squinted curiously as he noticed something strange. He moved to look where the dwarf’s right hand was covered by several large rocks and gingerly stuck his own hands in between them and tried to pull something out.
“You need help?” Loghain offered.
“No, I think I—” Maric suddenly stumbled back as the rocks gave way. The skeleton toppled over, the helmet falling loose and rattling loudly on the ground, and most of the bones crumpled under the weight of the old armor. Maric fell backwards, his hands coming up with a longsword that he waved about while trying to get his balance.
Loghain darted forward, ducking under Maric’s inadvertent swing and catching him. “Careful, there,” he said with annoyance.
Maric was about to reply, but when he held up the longsword he had pried from the stones, he became enraptured with it instead. The entire weapon was a pale ivory hue, the hilt wrought with gentle curves and the blade inlaid with brightly glowing runes. It was untouched by rust, and the blue glow from the runes was almost brighter than the light from their torches. Maric swung it about gently, his eyes wide with awe.
“Andraste’s blood,” he swore under his breath. “It’s so light! Like it weighs nothing!”
“Dragonbone,” Katriel said without hesitation. She could tell from the hue, as well as from the fact that it contained so many runes. Enchanters claimed that certain metals held the magical runes far better than others, and dragonbone best of all. It was why the Nevarran dragon hunters were said to have hunted dragons nearly to extinction ages ago. The value of such a sword was incalculable.
Rowan’s brow furrowed. “And why was it just sitting there? Why wouldn’t these darkspawn have found and taken it?”
As if in answer to their question, one of Maric’s swings brought the longsword close to the wall. In response, the black foulness that clung there crawled to move away from the blade. He paused and touched the sword to the wall directly, and the rot moved away even more quickly. It made a faint unpleasant keening sound, and after a moment the stone where the sword touched was bare.
“Maybe they couldn’t take it,” Maric commented, awed.
They stood and stared at the remnants of the crumbled skeleton. How long had he sat there? Had he tried to hide the sword, or had the rocks fallen upon him? Was this some dwarven nobleman, or one of the casteless who had tried to make the dangerous journey to Orzammar? Had he died here alone?
“I guess you got yourself a new sword,” Loghain remarked.
“I think it suits a king.” Katriel smiled at the thought of Maric having a magical sword, just like in the old tales where it seemed every handsome king and every erstwhile hero possessed such a blade. More often they wrested such weapons from the hands of terrible beasts or found them in the treasure hordes of mighty dragons—but the idea that Maric could be such a king like in those tales pleased her. Those tales always ended well, didn’t they? The hero got out of the labyrinth, and the hero always ended up with his true love. Everything turned out well.
Rowan nodded to the skeleton. “He may have been a king as well, for all we know. Let’s hope we don’t end up with a similar fate.”
It was a sobering thought.
The minutes inched by as they moved on, leaving the dwarven skeleton behind. Maric walked at the fore, his new blade bared. The soft glow from its runes offered a small degree of comfort, though it was fleeting. The faint sounds of movement ahead got more frequent, and along with them, they began to hear a strange humming. It was deep and alien, a reverberating sound that they felt in their chests and that made their skin crawl.
“What is that?” Rowan asked. She looked at Katriel. “Do you know?”
Katriel shrugged, bewildered. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”
“It’s getting louder.” Loghain frowned. He wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead and glanced at Maric. “How many do you think there will be?”
Maric stared ahead, licking his lips nervously. “No idea.”
“We may want to find more defensible ground.”
“Where?” Rowan seemed ready for an imminent attack, her eyes wide and nervously searching the shadows. “Back to the ruins? Will they come that far?”
“Look there!” Katriel shouted, pointing ahead.
The four of them froze as they saw a humanoid shape slowly shamble toward them out of the darkness. At first it seemed to be a man, but as it drew closer, they saw it clearly was not. It was a hideous mockery of a man, skin puckered and boiled with bulging white eyes and a toothy, malicious grin. It wore a mishmash of metal armor, some rusted and some of it held together with scraps of frayed leather, and in its hands it carried a wicked-looking sword, all points and odd angles.
The creature held its sword in front of it in a menacing manner, but it did not charge them. It moved slowly but incautiously, staring at them hungrily as if they didn’t represent a true threat of any kind.
The deep humming was coming from it. The creature was moaning softly, almost chanting, and this moan built upon the sounds of many others behind it in the shadows. They hummed in unison, a hushed and deadly whisper the creatures spoke as one.
Maric took a step backwards, gulping loudly.
More began to appear behind the first. More tall ones, some wearing strange headdresses and blindfolds, others in more impressive armor covered in dangerous spikes. Some wore little armor at all, their black and diseased skin covered in scars. There were shorter ones, as well, ones almost dwarf-sized with pointed ears and wide, demonic grins. All of them walked as calmly as the first, shambling toward them while moaning and hissing softly. The sound was loud now, reverberating around them like a physical force.
“Darkspawn,” Katriel announced unnecessarily.
Loghain held his sword up before him warningly, watching the creature at the head of the emerging pack. “Move back,” he murmured.
They slowly backed up, warily matching the pace that the darkspawn approached them with. At the back, Rowan turned about and suddenly halted, gasping in fear. “Loghain!”
In the flickering light of Rowan’s torch, more of the monsters could be seen drawing near from behind. They were surrounded.