My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  Lana chuckled, "No, I have a better idea, but you need to get closer to me."

  "I...is this all right?" he asked, hopping down a stair. At her hand wave, he moved down another, then two more until he stood both feet on the one stair above her. It complained greatly from his weight.

  "Here, hold this..." she twisted around to pass him her staff.

  Even as he took it, he asked, "Why?" An unearthly power radiated from what looked little more than a shed branch, stripped and polished.

  "Because, I need both hands free for this next part," Lana smiled, then turned back to face the drop off. Magic twisted around her fingers as she drew them across her body. The sound of wood splintering and cracking apart echoed through the pit. Cullen reached for the wall, bracing himself for a fall, but the stairs they stood upon remained stationary. Something moved out of his field of vision and he turned to watch a small section of the staircase yank off the wall above him. Barely showing any strain, Lana guided the section of stairs lower into the pit. It drifted so close he could have reached out to run his fingers across the stripped bolts that she ripped clean out of rock.

  Carefully lining it up below her, she stepped onto the stolen stairs and nodded her head. Lana kept her hands extended, magic crackling around her fingers. He'd seen mages throw things before, a chair here, a book there, mostly out of boredom or to make some point. Even when it was little more than a cup, the tendrils of whatever fade energy they corrupted into the world would hiss and spit around the mage. But it circled Lana's fingers like a loyal dog would its mistress. She stepped down her floating stairs, increasing her light steps again.

  "Come on, Cullen," she called, already halfway down her levitating steps.

  Gripping tight to the staff, as if that would somehow protect him from falling, he eased onto the floating stairs and was surprised to find the ground as steady as any other. He expected it to bob like a ship on the sea, or pitch to the side. With a greater care, he eased downward, his eyes level with the ground and trying to not think of how they'd get back up if this part of her plan failed. A gap of three stairs hung between Lana's yanked out chunk and the continuation of the original. She paused at the drop off and turned towards him.

  "You'll have to take it first."

  "Why?"

  To demonstrate, she dipped her hands an inch and the world shifted below Cullen. His hands flailed to try and catch himself upon nothing, but before he could fall she realigned the stairs. "If I jump first, the stairs will tip," she still explained as if he wasn't very aware how much his life rested in her steady hands.

  "All right, I understand," he said. Lana tried to flatten against the crumbling railing some safety conscious person took the time to put up. It was a kind effort on her part, but the stairs were only built wide enough for one person. Cullen slid to his side, easing down the stairs while staring at her instead of the ground below him. His boot searched for a landing, hovering through empty space before moving his weight downward. He attempted to lean back to give her room, but a warning from the edge of the stairs pinned in him place. There was no avoiding crushing her fingers into his armored chest.

  "I am sorry," he said and plowed forward as quickly as possible to minimize the pain. Lana crinkled her nose and sneered as her fingers banged across the metal griffin. Cullen kept silently apologizing, but he never felt the platform dip. She hung on until he stood at the precipice.

  "Do not fall," she instructed, as if he had any other plan in mind. Eyeing up the destination, he leapt. It was not agile, his ankle fumbling in the landing, but the stairs did not collapse. Holding tight to the staff stretched across his arms, he turned back and shouted, "All right!"

  Before he finished speaking, Lana hopped from her position and smacked full on into his back. Instinctively, she cushioned the blow with her hands, breaking contact with the floating stairs. Without magic to suspend it, the structure plummeted to the depths of the pit. Lana spun around and waved her fingers just enough to slow the descent so it softly landed on the pile instead of splintering into wood and nail shrapnel.

  "Well, that was fun," she smiled.

  "Your idea of fun would send hardened generals scampering under their beds," Cullen said, peering through the cracked railing at the stairs he occupied only a moment earlier. It wasn't until he leaned back that he realized she had her hands gently splayed across his back. "I should probably continue downward."

  "That would be advisable," Lana said.

  "Right, I'll just do that then..." he took two steps down and felt her hands slip away from his body. A shudder twisted up through the spine of the staircase. "Oh, Maker," Cullen's body paused, his foot hanging above the next stair. He tried to turn his head to look up at Lana. Her face was screwed up in concentration as she stared down at still deadly fall. "What do we do now?" he whispered through a held breath.

  The staircase screamed like a forest ripped apart by turbulent winds. He reached for the railing to steady himself, but that final bit of weight started a chain reaction. Boards rattled away from their support beams, popping off the nails. Stairs rained down below them, shattering into the ground.

  "RUN!" Lana shouted, shoving her shoulder into his back. Cullen did just that, leaping two or three stairs at a time, as the ground raced away from them. It was like trying to run up a hill of sliding sand, the entire structure collapsing beneath him while he tried ti use it. If he ever stopped moving he'd fall dead and Lana would tumble behind him. He jumped forward just as a board vanished below his foot. Twisting to warn Lana, his eyes widened as a piece of wood rose from the wreckage to slot into place.

  "I've got it. Go, go, go," she ordered. Her arms flew like she was conducting a symphony, slapping every broken board and section of splintered staircase below them. Even as he picked up speed, the staircase gave up on its fight and the remaining boards below them smashed to the ground. There were no more stairs to ease them downward but Lana was resourceful. Debris, planks, anything she could find she lifted from the bottom of the cavern and slapped it all just below Cullen's feet. He didn't slow, having to trust that she'd put something below him just as he stepped onto it. His shoes stomped through the wood, splintering at each step. The planks were packed with mud from the old rains sloshing up the ravine. His heel cracked through something and he glanced down at a shattered skull grinning up at the boot through its head.

  "Don't mind the corpses," Lana called, lifting everything she could find.

  Cullen nodded and used her staff to balance his body as the decline steepened. Lana was running out of corpses to trod on. He was about to shout something when he spotted the ground below. It was the pile of broken stairs, not the softest landing, but Andraste knew how much longer the one mage could maintain their ramshackle descent. Bunching up his knees, Cullen launched himself off the final plank and crashed onto the pile. Splintered boards and rusted nails tried to pierce through his armor, most missing except for a chunk of stair digging into his exposed shin. He flipped around to watch Lana follow after his leap. Tossing her staff to the side, he caught her around the waist, the momentum shoving him deeper into the pile of splinters.

  "That could have gone better," she struggled through gritted teeth. Cullen could only bob his head, which almost smacked into hers. He released his grip and she rolled off him, her hands still raised as if she didn't want to touch anything. Not that he blamed her. The smell was atrocious -- fetid meat during the height of summer couldn't compare to what wafted through the exposed ravine.

  Lana nodded at her staff, "Could you pick it up for me?"

  After yanking the splinter that felt much larger than it was from his shin, Cullen nodded and procured it from the rest of its dead brethren. Without the fear of falling to his death, Cullen noticed that what he thought were notches carved into the wood were actually names, dozens and dozens of them chiseled deep into the rosewood. He tried to hand it back to Lana, but she was turned away from him, her focus on the gaping hole carved into the bowels of t
he earth. A solitary dwarven statue stood guard before it. Its primitive head lay at its feet, the eyeless face gazing back at its feet. Cullen's own stature came up to where the nose should be.

  "Welcome to the deep roads," Lana said.

  More of that fetid smell oozed through the gaps in the rock. Sweet Andraste, if that was what it smelled like this far from the source, what was he about to find deeper in? But Cullen agreed to this, he wasn't about to turn back now. He twisted around to glance at the ramshackle stairs hundred of feet above him and sighed. It was not as if he had any means to escape it. Nodding at the grey warden, he crossed the threshold and stepped onto the ancient roads of the dwarves. Lana followed behind him. After a few steps in, she reached out for her staff. As Cullen turned to hand it back, he watched every stair, every plank, and every corpse plummet to the ground. The sound was deafening from forests of lumber cracking into itself, and a dust cloud billowed in all directions. Most of the debris shattered into the walls of the entrance, the pair protected by the broken statue.

  Lana watched it with a cool eye, unsurprised at the damage, but Cullen couldn't stop from leaning out. The entire staircase was gone, there wasn't even a sign it ever existed. Maker's Breath, had she been holding the entire thing up while they climbed down? How was that even possible? Cullen turned back to her and a chill crawled up his spine from a power he'd never thought any mage capable of.

  She smiled at him and tipped her head into the deep roads, "Shall we?"

  Chapter Six

  White

  There was a darkspawn tale his family favored telling while Cullen was growing up. It involved a pair of siblings who chased after a wounded deer/pet dog/demon that promised them gold. The object of their pursuit changed based upon who was telling it. Mia would often shift it to the last to cause her brothers to squeal in terror, taking time to mimic the rings of razor sharp teeth in the demon's three mouths. In the story, the siblings stumble across a gap in the earth. Not a hole filled with dirt and worms, but an eternal cavity cleaved into the heart of the world with no end in sight. No light could penetrate the endless black because it wasn't shadows but evil itself that blanketed the realm of the ancient dwarves. Cullen considered it little more than childhood nonsense until he stood inside the deep roads. He'd faced mage fire bursting against his shield, watched malifecarum carve up their own arms for one more inch of power, suffered demon's claws swiping across his skin, but he'd never felt evil like this. The hair on his neck stood on end the moment they crossed past the last of the faceless dwarven statues, and it hadn't settled down since.

  Lana did not seem to notice the pervading aura as she drizzled oil across her makeshift torch and lit it with a touch of her finger. She passed it to Cullen. The heat scalded his face and fingers, but it was a welcome relief to chase away the shadows pricking about the edges of his eyes. The grey warden laid her staff to the side and ran a hand along the walls of caverns. They'd shifted so quickly from the lain stones of the ancient dwarves into the unfinished bones of the earth, Cullen missed the transition.

  "Hm," Lana inspected her fingers, "no sign of blight here."

  "I hope that's a good thing," Cullen said, gripping tighter to the torch with his left hand and keeping his blade close with the other.

  She nodded, then cranked her head to the side. It looked as if she was trying to hear a whisper far in the distance. "Nothing so far, we may be in better luck than I hoped," Lana smiled. He was overreacting, amplifying things to a greater danger than they really were. Cullen tried to return the smile, but the smoke of the torch bit into his eyes.

  "Will it be safe to travel with this?" he asked, trying to waft away the smoke curling around them like an overeager puppy. The walls pressed into them, the cavern perhaps large enough to fit three people at a time, while the ceiling dipped and bowed, nearly skimming across Cullen's head. He was grateful in the long line of things that clawed across his brain, claustrophobia wasn't one of them.

  Lana picked up her staff and turned away, not answering him. She no longer used it as a walking stick, her feet as silent as she could make them while crossing the ground. Cullen tried to mimic her, aware of every jangle and clang the armor made. For being what grey wardens regularly wore into the deep roads, it was poorly muffled. Even his breathing expanded the chest enough to draw forth a metallic bang that amplified through the echoes in the tight cavern. And grey wardens suffered this for days or weeks down here? How was he going to last?

  As sure footed as a cat stalking its prey, Lana slipped ahead of him down the dark corridor. The occasional prick of blue light from the mushrooms sprouting along the rocks gave just enough light to keep one from fearing blindness, but nowhere near enough to guide by. Yet, Lana moved with an almost terrifying certainty, as if she'd done this a thousand times before. Cullen closed his eyes against the smoke inhalation, tried to silence his ears from his own deafening echoes, and chased after her. He kept a count of his steps, as if it would be important in returning to the surface. It was probably foolish seeing as how he wasn't about to climb the pile of debris, but it kept the memories at bay.

  He didn't fight darkspawn during the blight. He wanted to, to have anything to do beyond sit in that room and watch helpless as the people who tortured and murdered his friends returned to their lives. Gregoir insisted there were no more blood mages remaining, that they'd all been killed, but that was impossible. To have found so many mage survivors when so few templars, who were trained to fight demons, made it out... And the mages cared not a whit about what happened. Three days after she rescued them, the mages were back in their rooms, still splattered in blood joking with each other. One made some quip about how if the templars were such pushovers, maybe they should put the mages in charge of protecting them. Cullen glared impotently at the betrayers chuckling, his hands metaphorically leashed. Every laugh was a fresh insult to his fallen brethren. Why should they feel joy when so many others suffered? The anger threatened to overwhelm him to a breaking point, where he couldn't hold himself back, when all the mages marched to Denerim. He remained behind, never seeing a darkspawn or the horrors of the blight itself. Cullen still wondered if in the end that was a blessing or a curse.

  "Hey!" Hands wrapped around his arm, silencing his step. His eyes snapped open and he stared slack jawed across a magnificent sight. A cavern split open through the earth. Blanketed in veins of lyrium, the walls towering above and below lit up like the stars of a moonless night. The blue glow bathed the cavern into an almost serene experience. It was beautiful. Cullen blinked, grateful to no longer have smoke piling in his eyes, and turned to the woman holding him.

  Lana's eyebrows raised and she pointed to his feet. "You almost fell," she said. His boot hung an inch off the edge, prepared to take him even deeper down the crevice into whatever void waited beyond.

  Cullen shuffled back a bit while Lana clung to him. He nodded a thanks, then returned to staring upward, "This is not what I expected. The color and emptiness. It's magnificent."

  "You're lucky," she said, "my first trip into the deep roads involved dwarven politics. It was far less magical."

  He turned to her, her face lit up with the lyrium glow, her eyes transcendent from the awe inspiring view. Even for being a jaded grey warden she still relished in the beauty of the Maker's hand. After a time she must have felt him staring at her, as she caught his eyes. But Lana didn't glower or break away, instead she held his gaze for a beat and smiled. More than the heat of the torch blasted his face. A creeping terror rose up from the depths of his mind. What if he couldn't break away from her? What if he didn't want to?

  Lana shook her head and lifted her hand off him. "We should continue this way," she pointed towards the left. An outcropping of rock offered support above the long fall, but they'd have to travel one at a time. While Cullen tried to pound back half a thought into his brain, Lana took up the lead again. Her path twisted in and out of rock dissolved away by time and water, the lyrium providing a better light sour
ce than the torch. Cullen still held it high, clinging to the last bits of the outside world as they drifted deeper into the infested lairs of the darkspawn.

  At some imaginary node, Lana turned to the left. It was one of a dozen other possible twists they passed and did not take, but they all looked the same to Cullen. He tried to not imagine how easily they'd become twisted around in the dark labyrinth, making a mental picture of every turn. Yet, deep in his gut he knew that if he lost his grey warden guide, he'd most likely die at the end of a darkspawn sword before finding his own way out. The caves narrowed again, nowhere near as pressing as the entrance, but Lana slowed and waited for Cullen to catch up. Her hand lifted and she pressed the back of it against his chest.

  "What is it?" Cullen whispered.

  Her eyes slipped closed as she mashed her lips together like sucking on a candy. It was strangely hypnotic, drawing Cullen closer. He almost jumped when her eyes snapped open, certainty burning in the light of the torch. "There's a nest of darkspawn to the left of us."

  "How many?"

  She shook her head, "It doesn't work that well, I'm afraid. But I'm getting the sense there are enough I'd not want to challenge them. Luckily, I think the phylactery should be pointing us to the right?"

  Cullen fumbled to reach for the glass, her gaze unnerving him. His fingers only managed to skim the surface when he felt a rush of the beacon across his skin. The prey was close, and in the exact direction she felt. "How did you...?"

  Lana shrugged, "Grey Warden secret." The right path dipped down, the ceiling pinching them low to the ground. They both had to slip along the rocky wall, one at time to make it past little more than a keyhole. The rock bulged out of the wall, as if a fist tried to reach into the cavern and froze. Cullen was fairly certain he could make it through. After Lana dipped past, he handed her the torch and tried to make himself as small as possible.