David Gaider - The Calling

“It means we should be careful.” With that, she drew her sword and continued down the stairs. The others shared uncomfortable looks but followed after.

It seemed to take forever before they hit the bottom, or at least what Duncan assumed to be the bottom. The feel of the weight pressing down from above and the oppressive darkness pressing in from all sides made him want to gasp for air. He felt trapped under fetid water, desperately clawing for the surface.

Fiona, walking next to him, regarded him with a concerned look. “Are you going to be all right? You look a bit sickly,” she whispered.

He gulped a few times and forced himself to breathe. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. “I feel like I’m going to vomit.”

“Well, there’s a pleasant thought.”

“I’m serious! Can’t you feel that?”

“We can all feel it. Well, most of us can.” Her tone hinted at annoyance, and Duncan realized that she was talking about Maric. The man was walking up ahead next to Utha, oblivious to the scathing glare he was receiving from behind.

He smirked. “I heard you had it out with the King last night at the camp.”

“I asked him a simple question.”

“It didn’t sound simple from what Genevieve said,” he chuckled. “I’m just glad she was mad at somebody other than me for once.”

Fiona sighed irritably. Raising her staff, she closed her eyes and murmured something under her breath. Duncan could feel the prickle of power surging through the air, and immediately the small globe on top of the staff began to glow. The light was strong and warm, stretching throughout the corridor and driving back the shadows just a little.

The others turned and looked at the mage curiously. “Don’t waste your power,” Genevieve said, but her words lacked her usual crispness. Even she was probably relieved to have the shadows driven back a little farther, he imagined.

“There.” Fiona smiled at Duncan, pleased with herself. “Better?”

“Sure, except for the blinding light in my eyes.”

“Now you’re just being a child.”

With the added light from Fiona’s staff, Duncan could make out impressions in the wall behind the rot and decay. Runes, he suspected. Dwarven runes, though to what purpose he couldn’t really guess. He’d been told once that the dwarves held a reverence for stone. Perhaps the words they carved into the walls of the Deep Roads were prayers? Prayers now tainted by filth; it had a certain symmetry, didn’t it?

He could feel the darkspawn out there now. Genevieve was right. It just took some time to become acclimated. They were at the edge of his consciousness, lurking in the shadows far out of sight. It was that same feeling when someone was standing behind you, and you didn’t hear them or sense them in any way; you just knew .

Could they feel the Grey Wardens in return? According to the First Enchanter, the onyx brooches they’d been given would render them invisible to the darkspawn senses, but Duncan wasn’t so certain. His was pinned to his leather jerkin, and he turned it about to examine it more closely in the light. There were iridescent colors that slowly flowed just beneath the surface like a liquid. It was also cold, like touching a frosty lamppost in the dead of winter. He let it go, rubbing warmth back into his fingers absently.

“So did Genevieve make you apologize?” he asked Fiona.

The mage looked at him, puzzled. Her mind had clearly been elsewhere, but when she realized he was referring to King Maric, she rolled her eyes in annoyance. She had pretty eyes for an elf, he thought. Most elves Duncan had known always possessed such eerie eyes—light greens and purples, impossible hues that somehow made them seem alien. Fiona’s eyes were dark and expressive. Soulful, his mother might have said. She’d always had a way with words.

“No, she didn’t,” the mage said curtly. “And I’ve no need to.”

“He’s not so bad, you know.”

“You can’t know that. You hardly know him any better than I do.”

“Is it an elven thing? I knew a lot of elves back in Val Royeaux, and every one of them had a chip on their shoulders. Even the ones that didn’t come from the alienage.”

She shot him an incredulous look. “It’s not as if we don’t have a good reason to be bitter, you know.”

“Yes, yes, I know. We terrible humans destroyed the Dales. One of the elves I knew fancied himself a Dalish elf, even painted up his face to look like them. I thought he’d finally gone off to the forests to search for one of their clans, but it turned out he’d gotten himself arrested. Anyway, he used to talk about the Dales all the time.”

She stopped, stamping her staff down onto the stone so that the globe flashed brightly for a moment. Her exasperation with him was obvious. “There’s more to it than that. Far more! Don’t you even know?”

“Know what? That your people were enslaved? Everyone knows that.”

“There was a time,” her eyes flashed crossly, “when elves lived forever. Did you know that, as well? We spoke our own language, built magnificent wonders across all of Thedas, had our own homeland—and this was long before the Dales ever existed.”

“And then you were enslaved.”

“By the magisters of the Tevinter Imperium, yes. Just one of their crimes, and probably not even their greatest.” Fiona turned away from Duncan and ran a slender hand across the corruption covering a nearby wall. “They took everything from us that was beautiful. They even made us forget what we once were. It wasn’t until the prophet Andraste released us that we even realized what we had lost.”

“And she was human, wasn’t she? We’re not all so bad.”

“Her own people burned her at the stake.”

“I meant the rest of us.”

She looked back at him, smiling gamely even though her eyes were tinged with sadness. “Andraste gave us the Dales, a new homeland to replace the old. But your people took that away from us, too, in the end. Now we either live in your cities as vermin or wander as outlaws, but either way we’re unwanted.”

Duncan smirked mockingly at her. “Aww. Poor elves.”

The mage swung her still-glowing staff at his head, but he danced aside, laughing merrily. The sound hung oddly in the gloom. “Not sympathetic enough, I suppose?” He grinned. “I grew up on the streets, so if you were looking for reassurance on how good us humans really are, you aren’t going to get it from me.”

“You did ask,” she reminded him.

“About the King I did.” He pointed at the others, who now had gotten ahead of them. Fiona noticed it, too, and began hurrying to catch up. He kept pace. “Those things you talked about … they happened so long ago hardly anybody who doesn’t keep their nose stuck in a book would even know half of them. Elves aren’t just slaves anymore.”

“You think so?” Her look was dark, her tone suddenly brittle. “Do you think slavery just up and disappeared that day for every one of us?”

“Even so, I’m pretty sure King Maric had nothing to do with any of it.”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the blond king where he walked far up ahead. As if sensing the scrutiny, the man stopped and glanced back in puzzlement. She didn’t avert her gaze, and he sheepishly decided it was best to turn his attention elsewhere. “I know that.” She nodded. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

“You’re smart, so I’m guessing you know that?”

She sighed wearily. “He thinks his life is difficult.”

“Maybe it is. I sure wouldn’t want to be a king.”

“Why not?” Fiona frowned at Duncan, her anger rekindled. “Think of what you could do as king. You could do so much. You could change everything .”