David Gaider - The Calling

He held the shield up and looked into it. The minute details were indistinct, but the condition of his overall face was obvious: The taint now covered it all. His white hair had fallen out in clumps, and now there were only scattered strands and wisps of it left amid the withered and blackened flesh. His lips also seemed to have peeled back from his teeth, leaving him with a permanent skeletal grimace.

The rest of it could not be made out, and perhaps that was for the best. Bregan let the shield drop, a numbness coming over him. He had seen ghouls like this. Infected people that had survived long enough for their bodies to be ravaged by the course of the taint. Now it had finally caught up with him, as well. Strange that he didn’t feel more upset. The shock had worn off, leaving only a sense of inevitability.

“You are angered?” the Architect asked him carefully.

“No.”

“There is another chair behind you, against the wall, if you wish to sit.” Bregan turned and found that, sure enough, a simpler stone chair was where the emissary indicated. It was buried under a mound of rolled-up scrolls and weathered tomes. He walked over and cleared it off before sitting, discarding the shield on the floor. The aged stone protested under his weight. It was almost too small for him, built for a dwarf, but he didn’t care.

“I want to talk about your plan,” he stated.

The darkspawn sighed, but appeared unsurprised. It walked back around its desk and settled into its chair. The light of the glowstone wavered as if in acknowledgement of its presence. “Yes, it is time,” it finally said.

Questions percolated through Bregan’s head. He had been too crazed and exhausted to ask the Architect about his plan when he’d returned earlier, or at least he assumed that had been the case. There was nothing more he could do about his physical condition, after all. Really, he owed the Architect thanks for sparing him a long and agonizing process—one that the Grey Wardens had started when they inducted him into the order long ago. It was finished. He should feel relieved, if anything.

“You plan on unleashing the taint on the surface?”

“Those that survive,” it began slowly, “will become immune to the taint, as the Grey Wardens are. This is an immunity they would pass on to their offspring.”

“But they would be tainted. Like I am now.”

The creature nodded, as if this was something it had already considered and that didn’t bother it in the slightest. “That is so. I told you earlier that darkspawn and humanity would need to find a middle ground. That is humanity’s part. Your people would endure a great change.”

Bregan sat in the chair for a minute, mulling this over. It should have bothered him more, the idea of initiating such genocide on such a scale. But this would be protecting them, too, would it not? He was doing as he had originally been tasked, as all the Grey Wardens had been tasked: End the Blights. Save the world. So long as that was what was happening here, he couldn’t ignore the result simply because of the cost. When he considered the loss of life during the First Blight alone—in fact, was he not sitting in a ruin that was evidence of all that had been lost? What sacrifice was too great for the sake of survival?

If it were possible to end the Blights.

“So you need my help. To bring about this change in humanity.”

The Architect spread its hands. “Not at all.”

Bregan was floored. He almost jumped out of his chair, and only calmed himself as he noted the tension in the darkspawn as it watched him. He took a deep breath and settled back into the stone seat. “But why did you bring me here, then? I assumed you needed to know what I know. Now you’re saying you don’t?”

“I do need to know what you know,” it said, clearly pleased that Bregan had managed to restrain himself, “but it has nothing to do with humanity. That part of my plan will proceed without your assistance.” It tapped its chin thoughtfully. “I know little of your kind, and often your reactions are surprising to me, but I had surmised that even though a Grey Warden might wish to end the Blights as much as I, you would hesitate to strike such a blow against your own kind to do it.” It peered at him, suddenly fascinated. “Am I wrong?”

“You aren’t wrong.” Bregan noticed the way the darkspawn looked at him, the way it wrung its hands and leaned forward in its seat. Was it excited? Normally the creature seemed so cultured and passive, the idea that it might be emotional about anything was odd. “So I assume you need my help with the other part of your plan. Dealing with the darkspawn.”

“That is so.”

“Are you planning genocide against your own kind, as well?”

It nodded. “What I intend will inevitably lead to such, yes.”

Now Bregan was intrigued. Somehow he had assumed that the Architect’s plan for the darkspawn would be more lenient than his plan for humanity. “But there’s more to it than that?”

“My kind are subject to the call of the Old Gods.” It leaned back in its chair, looking off into the distance as it spoke. There was almost a religious fervor to its words, a belief in its holy mission that came across very strongly. The fact that Bregan could find such belief here, in the shadows of the Deep Roads, was at the same time both intriguing and a little frightening. “So long as the call continues, it does not matter if our numbers are depleted. They have been depleted before, and yet each time we have rebuilt and each time we have done it with only one purpose in mind: finding the prisons of the remaining Old Gods to free them.”

A slow realization began to dawn on Bregan. “So you mean to …”

“To find and kill the remaining Old Gods, yes.” The creature smiled, an expression that turned into more of a toothy grin on its puckered and twisted face. It looked positively demonic when it did that. “And you know where they are.”

Bregan didn’t bother trying to hide the fact that it was true. He’d surmised that this was what the darkspawn sought back when he’d made his first attempt to escape. What else could he provide that this creature didn’t already know or already have access to?

To have it admitted, however, made him squirm. There were only a few within the order that knew the locations of the ancient prisons. He didn’t even know how that information had been acquired, or of what use it might be. Knowing the location of the prisons didn’t mean that the Grey Wardens knew how to reach them, after all. Those destinations were far beyond the reach of men.

“How do you even know that?” he finally asked.

“You are not the first Grey Warden to enter the Deep Roads.”

That made Bregan pause. Of course there would have been others. The Calling had been a tradition within the order since the First Blight. In the years after the first darkspawn invasion of the surface, fewer Grey Wardens died in battle. They lived longer lives and realized at the same time that their vaunted immunity had a time limit. Somehow he had assumed that he had been the first to have been captured, though there was no reason to.

How long had this been going on?

“These other Grey Wardens … they told you this? Willingly?”

The Architect stared at him, its animation gone as it considered its words. At least, that was what Bregan assumed it was doing. “Most of your kind that enter the Deep Roads die, even though I attempted for a long time to prevent that. The darkspawn do not always do my bidding, as you have seen, and even if they did, it is not always possible to take a Grey Warden alive.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“There has only been one, one that I was able to find and who spoke to me in time. It was he who told me of the Joining, and he who told me of the knowledge that one such as yourself might possess.”