Genevieve looked disturbed, her brow furrowing as she glanced from Kell to Utha. “I thought it was just me,” she muttered.
“If you had spoken to us, we would have told you.”
There was little she could say in response to that. She stood there, looking lost and uncomfortable as a long moment of silence passed. Fiona shot Duncan a quizzical look and he shook his head vigorously. He didn’t have the same stains, then. Neither did she, that she knew of. Yet.
“Why is this happening?” Fiona asked, breaking the silence. “Is it because we’re so close to the darkspawn?”
Genevieve chewed on the idea. “There is no record of Grey Wardens being affected this way. I thought my time had simply come. Perhaps there is something else at work.”
“Such as?”
The Commander said nothing, merely staring at the ground. Kell replaced his gauntlet and was similarly quiet. Utha merely frowned. They didn’t know, she realized. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
“Then perhaps there isn’t a Blight at all,” Duncan suggested. As the others looked at him, he nodded at the idea. “We don’t know for sure that the darkspawn are behind this. They’re just here in the Deep Roads. This could be something else entirely, you said so yourself.”
Genevieve nodded hesitantly. “Still,” she said, “something is very wrong here.”
“But we do not know it involves the darkspawn,” Kell murmured, “or the Blight. Surely our only mission is to prevent a Blight from occurring. If that is not what is happening …” He let the thought hang in the air, and the Grey Wardens exchanged disturbed glances.
“But there is a Blight,” Maric announced.
Fiona looked at the man, and saw him shy away from the curious looks of the others. “I didn’t want to tell you this,” he said hesitantly, “but there is a reason I gave you an audience when you came to Denerim. There is a reason I believed you.”
“And here I thought it was the Commander’s charm,” Duncan quipped.
Maric ignored him. “After my mother died, Loghain and I were lost in the Korcari Wilds trying to get away from the Orlesians,” he began, his voice solemn. “We met an old woman, a witch who saved us. She gave me a warning. She told me that a Blight was coming to Ferelden.” There was something more to his story, Fiona could see it. But he stopped there, snapping his mouth shut.
Genevieve pondered the tale, and looked at Maric curiously. “A witch hiding in the Wilds? And you believe what she said?”
“There were … other things she said that were true.”
“Magic cannot see the future, Maric,” Fiona told him.
“But there are visions. Mages can see them; you said so yourself.” He let out a long, ragged breath. “I don’t know if I trust her. I paid a high price for the witch’s words, however, and it just seems like too much of a coincidence if it isn’t true.”
Fiona saw the shadow behind the man’s eyes. She didn’t know the full story of this witch, but she could see that its implications disturbed him. And he believed in what he had been told. But that was not so incredible, was it? Fiona believed in Genevieve’s vision. They all did. It was not difficult to believe that at the root of these visions lay the Blight, warnings against the coming disaster.
Genevieve nodded firmly. Her conviction had returned redoubled; Fiona could see the zeal burning in her eyes. “This is no coincidence,” she declared. “We proceed with the mission. Carefully.” The last she said with a sour glance at Kell.
He shook his head, frowning. “We are exhausted, Commander. You are exhausted. We have been through a great deal. Let us take a rest before we head below.”
“But we are here! We must press on, quickly!”
“The brooches continue to hide us from the darkspawn,” Kell said, pointing at the onyx brooch on his vest. “And we will need our strength. We rest here.”
Genevieve stared at him as if he had gone mad, but finally she relented. “If you insist,” she said stiffly. Without another word, she marched over to the nearest wall and unslung her pack.
It seemed they were stopping after all. The dream, when it came, was similar to the hundreds of dreams Fiona had suffered since she’d become a Grey Warden. Before, however, it had always felt as if she was looking on the dream from afar, hazy and easy to forget. Now it was crystal clear.
Fiona stood on a battlefield littered with dead men. All of them were soldiers in heavy armor, knights wearing the griffon standard of the order. Each had been brutally slaughtered. The smell of blood and decay hung thick and cloying in the air, the buzzing sound of flies nipping at her senses.
Overhead, the sky filled with an endless, roiling black cloud. It looked like ink spreading slowly in water, a great stain that blotted out the horizon. She had been told about this. The first sign of the Blight, said the Grey Wardens, is found in the clouds. When the mighty dragon rises, its corruption touches the world and spreads.
She was alone on that field of corpses. All alone. The wind picked up, a sickly breeze that carried with it the stench of carrion. A gloom fell upon her, and she stumbled as she watched something rise from out of the field of bodies nearby. It was enormous. A great, black thing that was as cold and terrible as anything she could have imagined.
Fear pulsed through her. Her heart raced, and she looked away. She didn’t want to see it. She threw her hands up in front of her eyes not to see it. Yet still she felt it coming. Her foot caught between two corpses and made her fall back on top of them. Dead flesh pressed against her and still she covered her eyes. Still she felt the darkness surging ever closer to her.
It was coming. And it was coming for her.
Fiona screamed in terror—
—and then awoke. It took her a moment at first to realize where she was, and that the darkness was expected. The campfire had died down to small flames, offering only the faintest illumination. She could see someone lying on the other side of the fire, facing away from her and shrouded in shadow. Perhaps it was Kell? Hafter lay nearby, easily identifiable by his mound of fur and his heavy breathing. Otherwise the silence was almost oppressive, as if it forced in around her from all sides.
“Are you all right?” a voice whispered behind her. It made her jump, and a gentle hand touched her shoulder to calm her down. “I’m sorry. I just heard you thrashing.”
It was Maric. Her heart beat a little too fast for her liking and she sat up. Sweat covered her face and had soaked into the padding under her chain, making it uncomfortable and itchy. The man looked up at her from beside the fire, his eyes bleary with sleep and his blond hair askew. His normally silvery armor was now dull with dried blood and grime. “I’m fine,” she whispered back. “I apologize for waking you,” she added as an afterthought, and heard him settle back to sleep.
Fiona stared into the fire. Utha was also nearby, sleeping quietly, as was Duncan. Genevieve was obviously on watch, no doubt out there in the thick shadows that lurked not a foot away. The group seemed so few now. She clutched her arms around herself and shivered. She hadn’t thought it was so cold down here before. Perhaps Duncan’s complaints were finally getting to her.
She picked up her staff and very quietly stood, not wanting to disturb the others. Utha stirred in her slumber, shivering and pawing her hands at some invisible enemy.
Fiona could sympathize. What the others were going through, she couldn’t even imagine. As they had retired, she had carefully inspected herself as well as she could without completely removing her armor and her skirt. She found no traces of the corruption on her skin, and that was a relief. Really, there shouldn’t be any. She had been a Grey Warden only a little longer than Duncan—her Calling was so far away she shouldn’t even have to think about such things. Yet in Genevieve’s own words, some other force was at work here.