David Gaider - The Calling

“Stay out of it!” she snapped.

“No, don’t stay out of it!” Fiona slammed her manacles down onto the ground with a loud thud, glaring at Genevieve. “Are we the only sane ones here? You’re willing to throw away everything on some gamble! On the word of a darkspawn!”

Genevieve ignored her. “Duncan?” she asked him again.

“I … don’t know,” he admitted.

It felt weak, and his face burned in shame as her expression changed to disappointment. “So be it.” She gestured to Utha and the others to go. “We will leave you alone for now, to think on your options.” Duncan watched them file through the stone door, and when it closed behind them with a deep thoom his heart sank. He somehow felt as if he had missed his opportunity.

The cell felt empty now, with Utha gone. Her manacles and chains lay on the floor beside Kell accusingly, and Duncan tried not to stare at them. The hunter pulled his knees up and rested his head on them, exhausted with grief. Hafter whined and tried to nuzzle his black nose under Kell’s arms, offering what support he could to his master.

“What do we do now?” Fiona asked hopelessly.

Nobody responded right away. Eventually Duncan looked at her. “What if you’re wrong?” he asked. “What if it’s not insane? What if insane is continuing to fight a hopeless battle when we have the chance to do something about it?”

“Is it hopeless?”

“Sure seems that way,” he snorted. “You ever met a Grey Warden who’s happy about it? How many more Blights are we going to fight before we lose? We could stop that!”

“Or you could make it worse,” Maric chimed in.

“Doing nothing is worse!”

Maric sighed in resignation. “Since when has taking a shortcut ever turned out well, Duncan? This is not a plan that is being acted upon rationally. This is your commander grasping at straws, because this way she and her brother get to be heroes.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

“No?” Maric looked incredulous. “Your commander isn’t exactly the most stable person, you know.”

Kell raised his head from his lap sharply. “It’s the Calling,” he muttered, barely opening his eyes. “The song is in our heads, and under our skin. It is driving me slowly mad. If Genevieve was farther along than Utha and me …”

Maric nodded. “Then it’s this Architect who is manipulating them. Waiting for this song you hear—”

“I don’t hear it,” Duncan insisted.

“My point is that this Bregan fellow must have been well along, himself. Genevieve is exactly the same way. They’re at the point where they would need to kill themselves, walking into the Deep Roads. This song is in their head, making them crazy, and what does this darkspawn do? Offers them a chance to make it all better. To give their life meaning.”

“What do you think he really wants?”

“Maybe he just wants to get to the Old Gods.” Maric paused, considering. “Perhaps this is what starts the Blight the witch warned me about. This Architect being led straight to an Old God.”

“Or it starts because we refused to help it,” Duncan countered. “That Architect creature isn’t like any darkspawn we’ve seen. Maybe it’s not like the other darkspawn at all.”

“Does that make it better?” Fiona asked. “These creatures are born of evil, Duncan. You know that. You feel inside you what they have swimming in their veins from birth. Do you really want to trust a creature that’s known that and nothing else its entire life?”

“And it has allies,” Kell pointed out. “Allies they won’t tell us about.” He seemed to be coming around to Fiona and Maric’s point of view, Duncan saw, though the hunter hardly seemed pleased about it. He shook his head grimly. “Whether this creature is manipulating us or not, we can’t take such a risk.”

“But Genevieve is right!” Duncan protested. “Our duty is to defeat the Blight!”

Kell’s pale eyes bored into him. “Our duty is to defend mankind from the Blight.” His voice was low and intense, and as he sat there he seemed to become more and more certain of his words. “There is a difference. We have stood up against the onslaught of the darkspawn time and time again, and that is our task. It is not for us to judge, to gamble with the lives of those in our care.”

“But—”

“It is for us to make the hard decisions that must be made. We cannot pretend that this also makes us gods.”

Duncan sat back against the stone wall, letting the chill of the stone press against the back of his neck. It felt good. His head swam, and he felt less sure what to think than before. Genevieve had always said the Grey Wardens did what ever needed to be done. If a village needed to be burned to the ground to keep the darkspawn from spreading, then it was burned. Nobody told them different. When a Blight was occurring, their word was paramount.

But this wasn’t a Blight, was it? The darkspawn had not yet found their Old God, not yet infected it with the taint and made it rise as an Archdemon. The Grey Wardens’ whole purpose had been to come here and prevent that from happening. Genevieve had told him that even the smallest chance of a Blight couldn’t be permitted, and yet she had changed her tune. This plan of hers—there was a chance it could go awry and start a Blight. If that’s what this Architect actually wanted, it could happen, and the Grey Wardens would be facilitating it rather than preventing it.

Genevieve believed the risk was worth it. She believed it fervently, he could see that just by looking at her. And she had wanted him to believe in it, as well. But perhaps she had lost sight of what she had come to do. Perhaps she wanted her life to have some meaning, to justify all the things that she had given up.

Or the things that had been taken from her.

“What do we do next?” he asked into the silence, refusing to look at the others even though he could feel their eyes on him. He stared studiously at his manacles. Part of him wanted to refuse, to spit in their eyes and stand by his commander. He had always thought her larger than life, a superhuman warrior who could do anything. That was why he had followed her to Ferelden, and agreed to go into the Deep Roads. She would defeat this menace single-handedly, prevent the coming Blight and prove herself to the Grey Wardens, and he would be there to support her. He owed it to her, if nothing else.

But then he remembered what she had said in her dream. Duncan had seen a side of her he hadn’t even known existed. She was just human, and her dream had been no more grandiose than any of theirs. There was no reason to think that she was without fault. Somehow that left him feeling dejected and empty, like he had lost something incredibly important.

“We get out of here,” Kell declared, his voice hushed.

“We need to warn Ferelden,” Maric said. “We need to tell them that a Blight may be coming, or something worse.”

“And if this Architect is right after all?” Duncan asked.

“Then our warnings will not be needed.”

He thought about it, and then slowly nodded. “Okay, then.” Rocking back, Duncan brought his knees up between his arms until he could place his boots on the manacles. Fiona seemed about to object, but he ignored her. Pressing hard with the boots, he ignored the painful scraping of the iron on his wrists as he pushed the restraints as far up on his hands as they would go.

With a hiss between clenched teeth, he suddenly jerked his legs and popped his thumbs out of joint. The manacles tore at his skin and left a bloody trail as they slowly slid off his hands. They fell to the ground with a clatter and Duncan collapsed, panting with the effort.

Gritting his teeth, he pressed his hands hard against the ground, pushing his thumbs back into place. The pain was excruciating, and he could feel the tendons in his hands ripping under the flesh. Still, it worked.