David Gaider - The Calling

The sound of something odd crunching under his boot heel caught Maric’s attention. He looked down, and noticed bones.

The others saw them just as he did. Fiona breathlessly lifted her staff up again, and it illuminated many piles of bones. Not human bones, Maric was relieved to see. Nor darkspawn bones, either. These were animal bones, most of them old and covered in dust.

There was a pack animal called a bronto that roamed the Deep Roads, formerly tame beasts that the dwarven Shapers had engineered long ago and that had gone wild when the darkspawn had destroyed the dwarven kingdoms during the First Blight. Maric had never seen one himself, but there were supposed to be herds of them still roaming underground. These were bronto bones, he suspected. Piles and piles of them. A whole cavern so full that it blanketed the stone.

“Is this some kind of graveyard?” Fiona asked, her voice small.

Kell shook his head. He crouched down and picked up one of the larger fragments. The fact that it was jaggedly split was obvious. Something had torn it apart. Many of the bones had suffered similarly. Without comment he tossed the piece aside and nocked an arrow on his bow. His pale eyes looked around intently.

They were all quiet, waiting.

“Do you hear that?” Duncan finally asked.

Each of them cocked their head, listening. There were only silence and shadows. It had also grown warm, Maric found. He had assumed that the warmth he felt was a result of all the running and sweating, but now that they were still and he was calmer, he realized it was something else. Mixed with the sulfurous stench was a dry heat wafting in the air.

“I don’t hear anything,” Genevieve growled.

“Exactly! Where are the darkspawn? I can barely sense them!”

The Commander seemed stunned not to have realized it herself. They stood for a long minute, doing nothing, before she finally waved them to proceed. “We need to find a way through. Whatever reason the darkspawn aren’t following us, perhaps we can use it to our advantage.”

The rest of them appeared reluctant but said nothing. They followed her quietly, picking their way through the field of bones as the cavern slowly opened up into something even larger. There was light here, too. It was dim at first, the faintest glow of lichen clinging to the walls, but eventually it increased to the point where Fiona’s staff wasn’t even needed. Maric was reminded of the great caverns that the thaigs were built within, but here there were stalactites and stalagmites instead of dwarven buildings. There were fissures pumping out steam, and he thought he saw faint streams of lava behind large rocky outcroppings. Their orange glow added to the dread ambience.

There were also more of the bones littering the entire chamber. Many of them were blackened, jumbled atop piles of dark ash. Several of the fissures sent clouds of steam pumping up along the rocky walls. The smell of brimstone became almost overpowering.

Kell’s hound began to growl fearfully, its hackles raised.

Genevieve stared into the distance, trying to peer past the faint haze of the steam as if she could command what ever secret this place held to reveal itself. Nothing came. Without looking at the others, she waved them forward. “Look for a way through.”

As they began to spread out, however, Kell suddenly hissed, “Stop!”

Genevieve turned back, annoyance clear on her face—which instantly turned into alarm. The hunter stared upward, his eyes wide and stark with fear. She followed his gaze at the same time as Maric did, as they all did, and they saw what it was that had kept the darkspawn from pursuing them. Something descended down upon them from above, something large. Something with great, leathery wings.

“Dragon,” Kell breathed.

“Wardens!”

Genevieve’s shout of warning was unnecessary, and came too late as the black-scaled high dragon crashed down onto the ground amid them with cataclysmic force. It roared as it did so, a blast of sound so furious that Duncan covered his ears. He screamed, the pain unbearable, but he couldn’t even hear himself. The ground shook under his feet from the force of the dragon’s impact, and a rush of air from the dragon’s wings beating hard sent him flying off his feet.

The world spun around him as he tumbled and skidded along the ground, until finally he slammed into a column of black rock. Agony blazed through his back. Gritting his teeth, Duncan forced himself to get back to his feet. A wave of dizziness swam over him, but he managed to keep his bearings.

The others had been scattered the same as he had, though the ones in heavy armor had not traveled quite as far. Already the high dragon was spinning around with surprising agility to attack them. It stomped down onto Julien with a taloned foot, pinning him before he could rise, and turned its sinewy neck to glare directly at Genevieve with a head that was twice as large as the woman herself.

She did not retreat, standing resolute with her sword poised before her, eyes warily locked onto the dragon’s. The creature snorted black smoke angrily, as if it was enraged by the presence of these intruders in its lair. It breathed through its huge fangs, each yellowed tooth as long as an arm, as it stalked carefully around Genevieve. She kept her sword ready and faced the dragon, her face grim determination.

The dragon stepped off Julien, and the man groaned in pain. Nicolas darted in, quickly dragging the man away to a rocky ridge nearby. There was too much dust and dirt stirred up by the dragon still clouding the air to see much of anyone else.

“Get yourselves to cover!” Genevieve shouted. Her voice drew the dragon’s ire and it darted in to snap at her with its great jaws. She rolled to the side, her speed impressive despite her bulky armor, and slashed at the dragon’s long neck with her sword. The point cut through its thick black scales, but not deeply. It was enough, however, that the creature reared up high and roared in outrage.

The entire cavern shook as the Commander darted forward, her greatsword held out to stab into the dragon’s chest. She never got that close, however, as it swiped her aside and sent her hurtling along the ground.

The other Grey Wardens were reacting now. Duncan saw Nicolas rush in, bashing the dragon on its rear leg with his mace. Julien joined him a moment later, limping as he attacked with his sword. So, too, did Utha appear on the creature’s other side. She had pulled out her double-club, a dwarven weapon he had seen her use from time to time, which consisted of two lengths of steel connected by a short length of chain. These she spun around her with dizzying speed, and she rapped the dragon’s scales with a wicked blow.

Kell appeared, as well, leaping up to higher ground with Hafter bounding beside him. The hunter restrained the dog from running down to join the fray, and began carefully firing arrows aimed at the dragon’s vulnerable head.

The dragon ignored the arrows and spun around with lightning speed. Its long tail swept Julien and Nicolas off their feet, sending them crashing to the ground, and only barely missed Utha as she did a somersault to avoid it. It fixated on the dwarf now, stamping down hard several times in an attempt to crush her. Each time the dwarf danced agilely out of the way.

Duncan pulled out his daggers and dashed forward to assist the others. The heat in this cavern was incredible, and already he was sweating profusely. It would be unfortunate if he got swept by those great wings into one of the lava streams—Duncan had never seen lava before in his entire life, but it wasn’t hard to imagine how unpleasant it would be to end up dropped inside it. About as unpleasant as being chomped on by those giant dragon teeth, no doubt.