Unknown - Dragon Age

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.

“How did they get behind us?” Maric asked, panic creeping into his voice.

“Careful,” Loghain warned. The four of them backed up against the wall of the passage, keeping close. They watched the darkspawn advance, their weapons held at the ready. Even with their prey cornered, the creatures did not accelerate. Their hum became louder, reached a hungry, fever pitch.

“Will your sword keep them back?” Rowan cried at Maric, forced to shout to be heard over the unnerving sound.

Maric tested his glowing blade, waving it threateningly at the nearest darkspawn. The creature flinched and hissed at Maric angrily, baring rows of jagged teeth, but it did not retreat. “It doesn’t look like it!” Maric yelled.

The darkspawn continued their slow, inevitable approach. Twenty feet. Then ten. The four of them stood with back pressed against back, sweat pouring as they watched and waited.

As the first of the taller darkspawn got close, it bared its fangs and roared. Maric stepped forward and slashed the dragonbone longsword across its chest in a wide arc. Where the blade touched, the creature’s skin sizzled and it reared back in agony, issuing a gurgling scream.

This finally seemed to energize the rest of the horde. They roared in turn and began to push forward. Katriel barely knocked a wicked blade aside with her dagger, just escaping being stabbed. Rowan pushed Katriel behind her, interposing her armor to take the darkspawn blows. Maric swung widely

with his longsword, taking advantage of the fact that it repelled whichever darkspawn it touched. Loghain kicked one of the smaller creatures back into its fellows, knocking them down, and then began to stab with precise, clean blows.

The ferocity of their defense worked in their favor, at least for a moment, before the darkspawn surge began to push them against the wall. They could not knock the blades aside fast enough, and though Loghain and Rowan kept pushing the creatures back, the others would heedlessly step over their fallen to strike.

The great moaning sound reached a crescendo, drowning out everything but the ring of steel upon steel. Katriel looked around despairingly. She was no warrior like the others, and felt all but useless. Was it truly all going to end here? After all they had been through?

And then a new sound interrupted the battle: the blowing of a horn, three strident notes that rang out into the passages, silencing the darkspawn completely.

Many of the creatures began to turn and hiss with outrage at something that was descending on them from behind. Blue lights lit the Deep Roads from that direction, and it took only a moment for the first dwarves to appear—dwarves, not some new monster of the deep. Maric glanced in Katriel’s direction, shocked, but she felt the same as he did. After journeying all this time, to find someone else down here in this oppressive darkness, to find anyone , was beyond belief.

Was this their salvation? Were they rescued? Or were these dwarves here to fight the darkspawn for their own meals?

They were warriors, short but bulky dwarves rippling with muscle and covered with bronzed chain. They wielded ornate swords and longspears, and some of them held lanterns hung from long poles that shone with a glittering sapphire light that seemed to cut through the shadows with ease. More strangely, these dwarves all had their faces painted—images

of skulls with fangs, giving them a dread and frightening appearance. In some ways they looked almost as frightening as the darkspawn.

As one the dwarves shouted a guttural war cry and began carving through the darkspawn lines with relative ease. The darkspawn all but abandoned their attacks on Maric and Loghain and the others, realizing that these dwarves were the more immediate threat, and turning to defend against the onslaught. The sheer rage and hatred of the darkspawn as they leaped at the dwarves spoke of the fact that these were true enemies. They knew each other and killed each other gladly.

Loghain did not let up, stabbing his blade deep into the back of a darkspawn that had turned away from him. The creature roared in pain as he kicked it off his sword and then turned to the next. Encouraged, Rowan and Maric did the same and began to fight toward the dwarves. Katriel went with them—for all they knew, the dwarves could be worse than the darkspawn, but for the moment they were the enemy of their enemy. They were willing to take their chances.

The result was dramatic. A great cry of terror went up from the darkspawn as their ranks began to dissolve. The ones behind Loghain and the others turned and fled, while the ones caught between them and the dwarves began to fight viciously and desperately. Several of the dwarves were hacked down, only to have their darkspawn killers immediately leaped upon by enraged dwarves.

Within minutes it was over. The last of the darkspawn had fled screaming into the tunnels behind them. What remained was a charnel house of gore, darkspawn bodies littering the tunnel with their black blood pooling over the rocky floor. Only a few dwarves had fallen, and now at least fifty stood staring suspiciously at the humans and elf as if wondering if they shouldn’t be their next victims.

Loghain held his blade firmly and crouched to attack the

first dwarf who charged his way. Rowan stood beside him, equally ready though clearly winded by the fight. Katriel moved behind them, wondering if the battle was not yet over. Were the dwarves going to rob them? Slaughter them? Leave them here?

The silence continued until Maric cautiously stepped toward the dwarves. He had black blood splattered across his surcoat, and his sword was dripping with it. He seemed nervous and perhaps even frightened, yet still he put up his blade before the dwarves to show them that he meant no harm. Very slowly he put it down on the ground, and then raised his hands in front of him again. Empty hands, no threat.

“Do you speak the King’s Tongue?” Maric asked, making certain to pronounce each syllable carefully.

One of the larger dwarves, a thick man with a long black beard and a bald head entirely painted to resemble a white skull, sized Maric up. He was dressed in golden plate covered in large spikes, and wielded a warhammer at least as tall as himself, covered in darkspawn blood. “Who do you think taught it to you surfacers?” he growled. The accent was thick, but very understandable. “What sort of fools are you to come down into the Deep Roads? Are you seeking your deaths?”

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