“Not sure. But look—it’s the same image repeated, with slight variations.” She pointed to another painting that was partially intact. “Three figures. The supplicant, the queen, and the monster. Except the person and the monster change. Not a lot, but a little. Enough to tell. But the priestess remains.”
She was right. The creature changed a bit each time, as did the figure, but the priestess remained the same. Or at least, almost the same. It was perhaps the oppressive nature of the place acting upon his worst fears, but it seemed to him that the priestess’s smile grew a little wider, and a little crueler, with each subsequent image.
His every instinct screamed at him to turn back, to abandon Jovis and his Wardens to whatever fate they had found. His training, his oath—even they told him it was too late, to turn back. There was nothing more that could be done for his comrades.
“I don’t like this place. It’s just wrong. That’s the only word I can think of.” Lesha’s voice still carried that note of fear, but it was sharper now, more distinct. It was a sentiment that Ramesh sympathized with deeply.
But something more than duty drew Ramesh forward. Words unspoken, and something greater than a simple oath. The Wardens were his family, and Jovis had been—could again be—something more. He could no more turn back than he could tear off his own arm. If he did abandon Jovis, if he made the cold and simple calculation, what returned to the surface would no longer be Ramesh.
“You should go. Get out of here. Only one of us needs risk their life.”
He started back down the corridor, before doubt and fear could change his mind. He’d only gone a few dozen steps when Lesha caught up to him. He gave her a look, equal parts gratitude and concern, and she smiled tightly in response.
They continued down the passageway. Around them, the walls grew smoother—larger. Delicate carvings started to appear, then flowers and creatures that Ramesh did not recognize. Finally, the hallway came to an end. In front of them, two massive stone doors hung partway open.
They stood there a long minute. There was something menacing about the doors. Unbidden, his thoughts turned to crocodiles—jaws hanging open, waiting for their lunch to come to them. It was yet another minute before he screwed up his courage enough to proceed. Moving together, they walked slowly, deliberately, through the opening.
* * *
The scale of the room was vast. In the darkness, he could not tell where the room ended, but judging by the echoes, it was immense. Beside him, Lesha let out a low whistle, her fear temporarily forgotten, chased away by the scene before her.
What details he could make out in the glow of Lesha’s staff were incredible. Carvings of a fineness and beauty that transcended any he had ever seen covered every surface of the cave. As a Warden, he’d seen as much of the Deep Roads as any—the greatest works of the dwarves, buried for centuries in ruined thaigs behind seemingly endless waves of darkspawn. This was something different—something more.
There was no question, in his mind, that these ruins were elven in nature. While dwarven architecture remained the rule in the Deep Roads, there were exceptions. From time to time, Wardens would find unmistakably elven architecture scattered among dwarven works.
This, however, was exclusively, entirely elven—there were no dwarven works interspersed throughout, not even any sign of the darkspawn that filled so much of the underground. And this chamber was nearly pristine.
The usual signs of age—of water, dripping from above, or pooling from below—were absent. Debris was scattered on the ground in places, broken vessels and shattered chests, but the room itself was intact.
Fluted columns receded into the darkness above, carved in patterns that seemed to shift, depending on how you looked at them, their surface smooth to Ramesh’s touch, speaking to the quality of the work, and the fineness of the carvings.
On the surface of the walls were carved massive bas-reliefs, running in three parallel bands and disappearing into the darkness in either direction. The detail was exquisite, and Ramesh quickly realized that what he had first thought to be some kind of paint or pigmentation was, in fact, millions of tiny gemstones set into the stone.
The images engraved into the stone seemed almost alive, each one a perfectly frozen moment as the actors within marched through their stories.
On the topmost band, stately elven kings and queens held court, their people kneeling before them in respectful supplication.
On the middle, scenes of healing and succor, of disease and injury being drawn forth from the sick and dying by elven mages.
And on the bottom, aravels, far more elaborate and grandiose than any that Ramesh had ever seen, pulled by armies of halla toward distant mountains—one of which, he realized with a start, was that same mountain that they were now beneath, the three jagged peaks that twisted around each other easily distinguishable in the detailed carvings.
It was, taken as a whole, magnificent—and yet, the more he stared at it, the more disquieting it became. There was something slightly off—something that set his teeth on edge and his palms itching for the comforting feel of his weapons. Not one specific thing, but a preponderance of little things all adding up to an aura of quiet, deliberate menace.
The striations on the columns, random at first, began to form patterns before Ramesh’s eyes. The same symbol—the horns of a halla—repeated on each column. The symbol seemed to shift, changing in an inexplicable way that made Ramesh’s eyes water. He tore them away, focusing instead on the bas-reliefs that ran around the chamber. Yet even they, suddenly, seemed wrong.
The lowest band of carvings, the halla pulling the aravel, was off. The halla were different, wrong. They had too many horns, for one, and a harder, more rounded look than was normal. A look that was almost insectile. And the horns themselves were longer and ridged. Organic, somehow. And the aravels were unlike any he had seen. The windows were barred, and they bore more resemblance to a prison-ship than anything else.
The middle band, with its scenes of healing, seemed now twisted, wrong. No longer did it seem as though mages were drawing corruption and disease out of the wounded and infirm—but instead they forced it in, pushing it through and into the fallen bodies.
The expressions on the faces of those elven rulers betrayed a contempt that was almost palpable, the beatific smiles edged with disgust and disdain for the creatures at their feet. And the subjects, far from kneeling in reverence as Ramesh had first thought, seemed more to be cowering in terror.
“Fuck.” A single word. Lesha exchanged a glance with Ramesh and shook her head, once. She’d seen it too, then. The urge to turn back, to return to the surface, was even stronger in this room. But a strangely rhythmic hum was growing louder and seemed to be coming from the other end of the cavernous space. One more room, then, and they’d leave.
They moved quickly, purposefully, through the massive chamber. The bas-reliefs started to repeat, the same images as before. They paid them little mind, having already had their appetite for the strange art soured. Finally, they reached the opposite end of the space. Massive doors, at least a hundred feet wide, were set into the wall. But there—to the side, the path showing signs of greater wear than anywhere else in the chamber, a smaller door, the size of a single person.
Not wanting to spend any more time than they absolutely needed to in that cursed space, they moved quickly. The door had a simple handle, its elaborate carvings worn smooth in places. The stench of decay, of brine, was almost overpowering here. Ramesh swallowed. He had no illusions—whatever waited for them on the other side of the door was not to be salvation. Lesha gave him a small smile, but it was forced.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Holding each other’s hand, they opened the door and stepped through.
Rank upon rank of grotesqueries filled the cave. Each one was a twisted horror of body parts assembled seemingly at random. The fanged maw of a serpent rested atop the slender neck of a halla, moving rapidly on the limbs of a
Varterral. A massive spider scurried about, its many eyes replaced instead with the heads of a dozen serpents, each one dripping venom from exposed fangs.
And in the center, a massive pool, filled with a viscous gray fluid. The scent of brine wafted forth from it. Above it, a massive lyrium crystal hung suspended. It glowed with a sickly light, tinged with yellow and green. Streamers of energy flowed from it into the pool, sending it bubbling wherever it touched.
Moving carefully, silently, they entered the room. They crept forward, as far as they could manage without being seen. When they reached the edge they stopped, taking shelter behind a large boulder made of smooth onyx—one of several that lined the upper part of the chamber, conspicuous in their uniformity and regularity.
They watched as a hurlock walked toward the pool, stiff-legged. It broke the surface of the gray ichor, which reacted instantly, flowing around the creature. In moments it was completely submerged. Out of the murk rose a cocoon, iridescent and pulsing with a green light. There was a hissing sound, a flash of light, and the cocoon shattered. Yet what came out was not a hurlock. It had the head of one, but that head rested on the body of a massive drake.
“Maker’s breath,” whispered Ramesh. The entire room was a menagerie of horror, each creature worse than the last. This was an army. Not darkspawn, though—something worse.
He signaled to Lesha. It was time to leave—to warn the Wardens. They turned, moving with purpose toward the exit. But Lesha, her wound still not fully healed, stumbled, her staff slipping from her fingers as she tried to brace herself. The reaction was immediate—a cacophony of sound, of voices, rose, and he could feel, more than hear, the massive stampede behind him.
And then a screech, louder and deeper than any other, filled the chamber. It was more than a noise—it was a physical force, issued from a throat larger than any he’d ever seen. And then the stone they sheltered behind moved.
It twitched and slid away. Boulder after boulder, each the same, slid past, and the creature’s full length was revealed. It looked like nothing less than a massive centipede. Each segment was the size of a horse, each leg the size of a small tree. It shifted, faster than Ramesh would’ve thought possible, and the chamber shook with its movement. It surrounded him and Lesha, cutting off escape.
Ramesh swung his daggers at one of the segments. A white substance splashed out and onto the stone, where it immediately began to bubble and hiss. The daggers themselves fared little better—the blade that had bit into the creature was fast melting, turning into useless slag.
The creature reared up, hundreds of legs twitching spasmodically in the air, and Ramesh gripped his sword tightly. Beside him, the hum of magic, ready to be released. Ramesh had no illusions—this was a foe beyond him. But he would make it pay a steep price for his life. It crashed down toward him and he braced himself for the impact, the crushing weight.
It never came. Instead the creature jerked, spasming in midair and arching over the pair of Wardens, smashing instead into the ground beside them. The lower half rocked, sending a series of small tremors through the cavern and bringing debris tumbling from the ceiling above.
The creature twitched, thrashing side to side as if locked in battle, and started to turn. It fought against itself, its movement staccato and uneven, the actions tinged with unwillingness. Finally, whatever internal conflict it had been waging was resolved, and it turned in earnest.
The massive bulk shifted, the segments retreated, and the end of the creature—the head, or what seemed most like one—descended. And with it came the greatest horror of the day.
Where the creature’s head would be, should be, was instead a humanoid figure. He sat astride the creature—no, not astride it. Ramesh realized with revulsion that the figure was part of it. The chitinous exterior flowed into the flesh, the lines between them blurred. His body had fused with the monstrosity, become one.
And the face—Ramesh knew then, with horrifying clarity, what had happened to the man he had risked everything to find. What Friedl’s warnings had meant, and why she had killed herself, rather than come back to this gruesome place. Before him, twisted and broken, was Warden Jovis.
* * *
It was him from the waist up, but bloated, grotesque, and his flesh flowed into that of the massive creature. His eyes stared blankly, unseeing. The mouth, too wide and lipless, stretched and moved uneasily, as if only now remembering human speech.
“Ram … esh?” The voice came slowly, as if across a great gulf of memory, and possessed of an almost insectile buzz that tore at Ramesh’s tattered nerves. The head turned slightly, and the eyes shifted—staring at Ramesh, through him. They focused—and in them, Ramesh recognized his friend.
Tears came to his own eyes, unbidden, blurring his vision; Ramesh made no attempt to wipe them away. The memory of the past, of better times spent leagues away from this place, this broken nightmare, pressed down on him, a weight of regrets and unspoken feelings. Ramesh blanched but stood firm, meeting the monstrous gaze. It blinked slowly. Behind him, Ramesh heard Lesha swallow.
“It is … Warden Ramesh. Yes?” The voice was clearer now. More human.
“Yes, Jovis. Yes. It’s me. Maker, what did they do to you?” The Jovis-thing shifted its bulk, turning so its entire body now faced Ramesh.
“We drank. Works differently for us. Can’t just touch it, we need it inside. Takes a while. They turned us. Two halves, two wholes. Trying to be two ones. But I stayed me, and it hates that.” It twitched, the cavern shaking in sympathy. “Not forever, not for long. Just for now—enough.” The buzz returned to the voice, insistent. “And we waited for you! Oh, yes! Now you come.” The creature screamed, and Jovis’s voice came back.
“Can’t let this out. Got to … bury it. Bury me.” The words came even more slowly, each one being forced through whatever will battled Jovis’s for control of the creature. “She cannot have it. Not again. Locked for a reason.”
“Who, Jovis? Who can’t have it?” The creature made a gurgling noise, and it took Ramesh a moment to realize that it was laughing.
“Same Ramesh. Always the wrong question.” A shudder rippled through the monstrous bulk, and the insectile buzz was back in Jovis’s words. “The lyrium. Blow it up. Take this place down. Collapse the entrance.” It started to twitch again, and the next words were muffled, forced. “Stop me. Stop us.” Jovis’s face twisted in pain, in surprise, and he slumped forward.
Ramesh started forward, his remaining weapon gripped firmly. He could do one thing, at least. End Jovis’s suffering. Just as he reached the Warden’s body, however, the eyes snapped open, now black and devoid of any humanity. The creature grinned, the expression alien and horrifying on Jovis, before letting out an earsplitting screech and charging forward.
The creature’s massive bulk rushed toward Ramesh, too fast to dodge, and he braced himself for the crushing force. There was a sizzle, a scream of insectile surprise, and a massive flash of light, blinding Ramesh momentarily. When his vision cleared, he saw the wall of green light between him and the monstrous insect.
Lesha’s face was white with the strain. Jovis—whatever his essence, his spirit, that had animated his face—was gone, buried under the alien will that drove the beast as it pushed against the energy field she’d created. It chittered angrily, then reared and crashed down once again, sending Lesha skidding several steps backward, but the wall held.
“Go,” she forced out through gritted teeth. Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled down.
“Not without you, acolyte.” Ramesh grabbed one of the darkspawn weapons that littered he floor of the cavern and hefted it. Good balance. Lesha shook her head, then said, “Warn the Wardens. Bury this blasphemy. I will buy you time.” The creature redoubled its pressure on her shield, and her staff began to smoke. Her nose bled, blood trickling out of both nostrils.
The rest of the creatures in the chamber began to stir. One chimeric monstrosity, a bat with the tail of a scorpion, lunged past the sh
ield, striking at Lesha. Ramesh cut it out of the air, sending its limp body tumbling to the ground, its acidic venom a hissing noise as it etched the stone.
More of the creatures skittered around the edges of Lesha’s shield, striking at her, striking at Ramesh. The hurlock that they’d seen earlier breathed a jet of fire, singeing the edges of Ramesh’s cloak, and catching Lesha in the legs. She grunted in pain and dropped to her knees. Before her, the shield started to crack, the sheer mass of the behemoth overwhelming her reserves of energy, and it let out another shriek, this one of triumph.
Despair crept over Lesha’s features, and over Ramesh’s heart. This was it, then. The end. She looked at the creature, tears in her eyes. And then past it. Above it. That single lyrium crystal, as large as any he’d ever seen …
He saw then the shape of her plan, of her desperation. He started to leap forward, to stop her, but he was too late. The shield collapsed. The magic flew from her fingers, striking that one perfect crystal. And it exploded.
The blast sent Ramesh flying, tumbling backward. He slid across the stone ground before finally slamming into the wall, his breath knocked from him. A scream of rage, of anger, issuing forth not just from one throat but from a hundred.
The loud crack of stone filled the cavern. From above, a shower of pebbles, of rocks, and then of boulders as the ceiling began to fracture. The rock where the crystal had hung was starting to crack, the rock spiderwebbing as entire sections broke free, stalactites tumbling down and striking the ground with a crunch.
And then, the loudest crack of all as the ceiling finally, completely, gave way. Hundreds of tons of rock avalanched down, a deafening cacophony that stole away all other sound.
Like a series of dominos, the rocks continued to fall, stone showering down from unknown caverns above. Everything in the chamber had been buried by now, but still the rock fell, as if the earth itself sought to bury every trace of what lay beneath it.
The sound started to slacken, the deluge becoming a shower. A trickle. And then, silence. The occasional echo of a pebble tumbling down the slope of the cave-in, but otherwise, silence. And in front of him, a wall of rock, taller than the chamber. Lesha had done it. He blinked back tears.
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 10
