David Gaider - The Calling

They were in a cell. A single, long chamber with stone walls and chains attached to the wall with solid-looking pitons. The amount of corruption covering the wall was extensive, tendrils spidering out in every direction, and he was glad the deep shadows hid most of it. The air was musty, heavy with the smell of blood and layered with an insidious foulness that crept inside him every time he breathed.

“Duncan, how are you feeling?” Fiona repeated. “You look confused.”

“I am,” he muttered. “How did we get here?”

“I don’t know.” She looked around the cell, her gaze lingering on the stone door. “We can’t reach the door to test if it’s locked, and with my hands bound I can’t cast.”

“You can’t cast at all?”

“Nothing that would help us out of here.” Her eyes flicked to Maric beside him, her face filling with anxious concern. “Can you please check Maric? He hasn’t stirred, and I can’t reach him.”

Duncan turned toward the man, lugging his manacles closer—they were heavy—and pressed his fingers to his neck. There was definitely a pulse, weak as it was. “He’s alive.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. Kell glanced at both of them, frowning. “The song is very loud here, is it not?” he said.

“What song?” Duncan asked. He didn’t hear anything at all; the cell was completely silent save for their breathing. He could sense the presence of darkspawn all around them, a whole sea of them almost right outside the door. Was there no end to these creatures?

Fiona looked at him archly. “You really don’t hear it?”

“Hear what? There’s no song.”

She glanced at Kell. “I hear it very faintly, like something off in the distance. I thought maybe it was the darkspawn, but now I’m not so sure.”

“It’s the Calling,” he said solemnly. Fiona stared at him, stunned, and Duncan felt the same way. The Calling? There’s no way Fiona should be hearing that already, surely! Utha made several gestures at the hunter and he nodded. “I don’t think it’s just because we’re down here, either. Something is happening to us.” He indicated the spreading corruption over the visible parts of his chest and arms. There was a lot of it. If Duncan had seen the man walking down some street, he would have expected children to be throwing stones at him and calling him a leper, if not worse.

Horror dawned on Fiona’s face. She raised her manacles and let one of her chain sleeves fall to reveal her bare arm. It was covered in several long scratches, and bloodied, but the corruption was clearly visible. It wasn’t as extensive as Kell’s, but it was there.

“I checked not even a day ago! This wasn’t like that!”

“We are corrupting from within,” Kell agreed. “Far more quickly than we should be.” Utha beside him merely nodded grimly, turning back to stare at her manacles.

Duncan twisted himself around to try to look at what bare skin of his own he could. There wasn’t much. Some of the leather straps covering his arms had come loose, but not enough for the armor to peel away, and while his trousers were ripped, the bit of skin underneath was too covered in dried blood for him to tell anything. His hands, however, were clear. “I don’t see anything,” he announced nervously. “And I don’t hear anything, either.”

Fiona shrugged. “You were the last of us to take the Joining.”

That wasn’t exactly reassuring. His Joining had been only months behind Fiona’s, while hers had been many years behind Kell’s and Utha’s.

“So this is where darkspawn keep their prisoners, huh?” he asked, hoping to change the subject. “Do they have executioners? Are they going to come and question us?”

Utha made a rude gesture and Kell frowned at her. “He doesn’t know,” he gently reprimanded her. Looking back at Duncan, he answered. “They don’t keep prisoners. The Grey Wardens know that the darkspawn are capable of simple industry, but they don’t seem to care about questioning us or finding our plans. They aren’t the most subtle creatures.”

“Hate to contradict you, but we sure look like prisoners.”

“I know.” His pale eyes narrowed as he considered the matter, troubled. “I had hoped Genevieve might be here,” he muttered.

Time passed slowly. Their weapons had been stripped from them, as had their packs, so there was nothing to eat and the store of healing poultices that Fiona had brought were now uselessly in darkspawn hands. Occasionally strange sounds would come from far off, loud ringing noises as if something was pounding against metal, and then a great groaning. They heard the darkspawn, too, hissing and moving about. It was faint, but they were definitely out there and leaving them alone, for what ever reason.

Maric stirred, in time. He groaned at first, and at Fiona’s urging Duncan checked his bandages and ascertained that what ever muck was underneath them seemed to be working. The man’s bleeding had stopped. Duncan gently shook his shoulder until he opened his eyes.

It took a minute of blinking before he finally turned his head and looked directly at Duncan. His eyes looked a bit unfocused, and he seemed confused. “Cailan?” he groaned.

Duncan chuckled. “Unless your son looks nothing like you, no.”

More blinking. “Duncan?”

“There you go.”

Sitting up was a slow pro cess for him, and the same questions followed that Duncan had asked before. Fiona seemed relieved to see that Maric was awake, at least, and with the passing minutes he seemed to get stronger and stronger. “What was that spell at the end?” he muttered. “Who cast that?”

“It was an emissary,” Fiona answered. “I didn’t see it, however.”

“They’re the ones that can talk, right? Well, if we’re lucky we’ll see it eventually.”

More time passed, and they took turns getting some sleep. Not that any of them rested much. The cell was cold, and their injuries ached. Duncan wanted nothing less than to rip off those bandages and what ever itchy mixture was applied to his skin beneath them. If darkspawn had truly mixed it together, he didn’t want it on him. He could only imagine what it was actually doing, mixing with his blood. The idea made him want to vomit.

Eventually there were new sounds. They perked up as footsteps approached the door. More than one set , Duncan thought to himself. Three creatures, at least. Definitely darkspawn, as he could sense their taint. The door swung open with a loud, wrenching sound—though he didn’t hear a key turning at all. Not locked, then? An odd cell, to be sure.

The first darkspawn who walked through the door was an emissary. Duncan had never seen one before, but the creature looked just as he imagined a darkspawn mage should: dirty robes, blackened staff, and a small, withered head complete with toothy grimace. As evil as it looked, however, it walked with a calmness and sense of self-awareness that spoke volumes of its intelligence. This was no simple, raving monster. He wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or terrified.

The other two darkspawn who followed the first were much more heavily armored. They looked strange, however. Their withered flesh was not quite the same, and their eyes were bloodred rather than pale white. Were these ghouls, then? Neither had any hair, but even so, Duncan could see that one of them was clearly female—

He paused, shock registering even though he couldn’t quite believe it. The female stared directly at him, her gaze intense. The hard lines of her face were familiar, as was the grim set of her jaw. She wasn’t wearing her black Grey Warden tabard, but her armor still looked the same, simply tarnished now rather than silvery bright as it once had been.

“Genevieve,” he breathed.