“But I don’t understand. There’s no way those things can change.”
“Can they not?” It seemed surprised. “You are human, and yet you are immune to the taint.”
Bregan held up his arm. In the soft light of the glowstone, the trail of corruption along his flesh was only too evident. “Not anymore.”
“You are not dying. You are changing.”
The word sent a shiver down his spine. The creature said it as if this should not be alarming in the slightest, but the truth was that not thinking about what was happening to him was the only way he could keep from going mad. His mind shied away from images of those poor fools that had fallen sway to the darkspawn’s plague. Those that did not suffer an agonizing death at the hands of the sickness became ghouls, beings whose shattered minds were subject to control by the darkspawn. They became pawns, even servants, until finally they withered away and perished.
Would he begin to obey eventually, just as they did? Would he be in that cavern soon, digging along with all the other creatures, mingling his flesh with theirs? “It … it doesn’t matter”—his words stumbled together—“there’s no way that the rest of humanity could become immune. Not unless they became Grey Wardens.”
“Yes.” The Architect nodded as if this point should be obvious.
Another shiver ran down Bregan’s spine. Sweat ran into his eyes, and for a moment he felt faint. “But becoming a Grey Warden means drinking darkspawn blood. Most of those who do it die. Only a few of us ever succeed.”
“Yes”—it nodded again—“many of your kind would very likely perish.” Before he could protest, the creature raised its hand. “You exist halfway between human and darkspawn. If the rest of your kind could be made as you are, they would have no reason to fear my brethren.”
“Other than the fact that the darkspawn keep trying to kill us?”
“That, too, would need to end. Humans and darkspawn must meet each other in the middle.” It paused and studied Bregan carefully, as if watching for a reaction. Oddly, he found himself having very little reaction at all. He sat against the wall, listening absently to the droning hum that seemed to vibrate inside the very stones, and waited for the sense of horror to come. It didn’t.
Shouldn’t it? Unless he was somehow mistaken, the Architect was suggesting unleashing the darkspawn taint on humanity at large, putting each and every human through the same kind of torturous test that allowed one to become a Grey Warden … those that survived, anyhow. Which wouldn’t be many. There was a reason only the strongest and hardiest were chosen to join the order. Few others had any hope of surviving the pro cess.
Was such a thing even possible? Should he not be angrily demanding answers from the creature? Part of him said he should be horrified and enraged, and that he should find out the details behind this plan. He imagined it involved some brand of darkspawn magic, but what, exactly? Shouldn’t he want to know?
As he sat there, chin on his chest and listening to his own hard and ragged breathing, he found that he didn’t. Was it not the job of the Grey Wardens to seek an end to the darkspawn threat? And when had they ever actually been close to succeeding at that goal? Each time the Blight came, it brought with it a war that came that much closer to wiping out humanity altogether. Each time the world had to scramble to save itself, and each time it had barely managed to succeed.
How many more times could it do so? Would the next Blight be when the darkspawn finally succeeded in wiping out all life from the surface of Thedas? How many would die then?
Bregan suddenly recalled the man who had inducted him into the order. Kristoff had been a grizzled and uncompromising warrior, all hard edges and frowns. He had been Commander of the Grey for many years before succumbing to the taint. Bregan had accompanied him down to Orzammar, feasted with him at a table full of boisterous and drunken dwarves, and then watched him walk out into the Deep Roads.
At the time, Bregan had been overcome with grief. For all his taciturn manner, Kristoff had been his only real friend within the order. He’d allowed his student to care for his horse and sweep his quarters, knowing that Bregan would rather do such tasks than carouse with the other recruits. He’d played queens with Bregan on a dusty old board and sparred with him indoors when it rained. It was Kristoff’s recommendation that named Bregan as Commander of the Grey after him, despite Genevieve’s unspoken jealousy at the promotion, and Bregan had accepted it only because Kristoff had demanded he do so.
What he remembered of his grey-haired mentor that final night, however, was the man’s relief. While it had been all Bregan could do to choke back embarrassing tears, Kristoff had been calm and composed. The sense of serenity around him was palpable, all the grumbling tension that was present for all the years Bregan had known him completely gone. He’d walked into the shadows of the Deep Roads, head held high as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and stopped only to give his former student a few final words of advice.
“You will guard them,” he’d said, “and they will hate you for it. Whenever there is not a Blight actively crawling over the surface, humanity will do its best to forget how much they need us. And that’s good. We need to stand apart from them, even if they have to push us away to make us do it. That is the only way we can ever make the hard decisions.”
At the time Bregan had thought, What hard decisions? There had been no Blight in centuries, and at worst the order dealt with darkspawn raids that popped up on the surface from time to time. The hardest decisions a Commander of the Grey was forced to make were which recruits could be given the test to join the order. It was never an easy thing, as even the hardiest of them often perished, but it seemed hardly worth Kristoff’s words.
The Grey Wardens watched and waited as they always had, but now the order was but a shadow of what they had once been during the wars of long ago. Late at night in the quiet of his cell, Bregan had allowed himself the private luxury of believing that the days of the darkspawn were well and truly done.
At least, he had believed that until now.
“You say nothing,” the Architect murmured uneasily.
“What should I say?”
The emissary gathered its robes closer around itself and circled Bregan warily. It seemed to be watching for some sign, its pale eyes intent. “My experience with humans is limited,” it admitted. “What you will or will not do at any given moment is a mystery to me. Your kind is often irrational. Yet I was expecting … anger, perhaps?”
“And what am I feeling now, do you think?”
It blinked. “I would say that you are sad.”
Bregan felt leaden. His thoughts became fuzzy, and for a brief moment it seemed as if the mad humming was a world away. He simply sat there in the quiet shadows, sweat running down his moist and corrupted skin as the robed darkspawn looked down upon him. How very unreal this all was, somehow. “Can you do it?” he finally asked. “This thing you plan. Can you actually do it?”
“Not alone.” The Architect offered no further elaboration, and he wasn’t sure that he would get any even if he pressed. Part of him wondered, in a much removed fashion, if perhaps he should attack this darkspawn after all. If he had thought the creature dangerous earlier, now it might possibly be the most dangerous thing in the entire world.
He did nothing. He sat there and stared down at the cracked floor, chipped away by an eon of wear. Once there had been stone tiles there, delicately inlaid with a geometric design typical of the dwarves. He’d seen something much like that within a bathhouse in Orzammar. Perhaps this had once been a similar place? He tried to imagine it filled with bright lamps and steamy tubs and curvaceous dwarven noble-hunters giggling behind their fans. Instead he conjured only images of corrupted flesh and pools of stagnant foulness. A cancer had taken over this place, a dank sickness that grew in secret until it spilled out onto the surface.