My Love Page 9

  Lana sighed, "That's sweet. I never, well, no, I did sort of know after, but...But it doesn't change anything. I still feel broken."

  "So do I," Cullen admitted, his eyes slipping shut. "Not much changes it, certainly not platitudes."

  "Then why..."

  He shrugged, a hint of a smile twisting up his lips, "I wanted to tell you the truth either way."

  Lana kissed him, a lustful heat burning through it as she lapped up his lips with her tongue. He rose to the challenge, matching her new dance. His fingers drifted down her side to cup that swell of her breast and then take in the rest of it. Never one to be passive, Lana kneaded into his ass cheek.

  Despite how much he wanted her again, Cullen pulled back to ask, "I thought you intended to leave me to sleep?"

  An ornery smile twisted up her flushed cheeks. She pounced upon him, twisting him flat onto his back. Straddling across his stomach, her thighs clenched against him. She leaned down and whispered, "Sweet dreams."

  Chapter Nine

  Spires

  Fire crackled across the creature's skin while smoke and the smell of blackened fat buffeted around it. The deepstalker yipped and screeched as it dashed for cover straight through the rest of its brood. Every one caught alight. Lana carelessly blew her fingers off while watching them scurry back into their holes, flames trailing their departure. The deepstalkers only attacked them a few times, but with every fresh assault their ranks grew bolder and greater in number. Cullen rolled his arm around to glare at the blood slicking up his sword. The darkspawn gore was the worst, Lana insisting she wipe it off and then burning her rag when finished, but the deeptstalker ichor clotted in blobs across the metal. It appeared as if his own blade scabbed up.

  "How much further until we find this thaig?" he asked.

  "How many times are you going to ask that?"

  "Until we're there." He struggled to scrape off the deepstalker's blood, his fingernails straining below the scabs trying to pop them off. Pain lanced up his finger as the nail bent inward, the blood not about to give in. Lana laid a hand across his shoulder drawing his attention up to her eyes. She smiled and wiped her fiery magic down his sword, the metal heating to a flaming red without reaching below the hilt. Cullen stared a question at her but kept his hand above his own blade as she poured enough power to ignite three deepstalker nests into it. She cut off her mana and her cooled hand gripped onto his. Together, they swung his sword in an arc splattering the walls in deepstalker blood and leaving his blade nearly pristine.

  Cullen stared in awe at the simple move, he'd never even thought to try such a thing. There were perks to traveling with a mage. Lana seemed to sense his thoughts and she curled her fingers behind his jaw to pull him into a kiss. Definite perks to traveling with a mag. A grey warden mage.

  After breaking away, she smiled, "Were you always this surly or did you stumble into it in old age?"

  "I'm not surly," he cut back, unable to bite back a grumble. Stumbling to find his mental balance after the kiss, Cullen swiped his sword through the air to cool it.

  "Right, not surly at all." Her fingers trailed across his forehead and down the bridge of his nose, "You got these glower lines from smiling too much."

  Cullen grabbed her fingers in his. Her light hearted smiled faded until he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. A brazen heat still burned off her skin leaving behind a flush trailing from his mouth up to his cheeks. "I'm new to smiling," he said intending it to be jovial, but the truth warped his tone. He'd never had much reason before.

  Dragging her fingers through his scruff, Lana twisted her head to the side. Her voice drifted away as she spoke, "We do what we must so others won't."

  "Hm...?"

  "Just something I heard once. Anyway, the thaig is close. Which is lucky seeing as how this road ends in an inescapable pile of rubble," she gestured to the end of the road they'd been following for what felt like days now. How Cullen managed even a few hours of sleep he was uncertain with every horror the deep roads could throw at them only a thin rock collapse away. Lana kept guard over him and he woke to find her crouching over the first of a growing pile of deepstalker corpses. She'd licked the magic flame off the end of her fingers and inquired if he was hungry. There was none like her in all of thedas, he was certain.

  He voiced many pointed concerns about the deepstalkers at first, but the worm-like creatures seemed easy enough to kill if they kept focused. While he kept an eye on the chittering holes lining the walls, Lana led them through the roads of the dwarves. Lava gurgled down grooves running the lengths of the road, the fiery light highlighting runes carved across the sunken walls. Cullen never put thought into the dwarven kingdom, their people having no fear of mages, but as he stood in awe of their ancient wonders he felt remiss. Pitched pillars collapsed into the vast space, the rubble causing them to have to scrabble around, but just as many remained upright after thousands of years and darkspawn calling it home.

  As he first walked down the stone floors, he felt an awe replaced by alertness from the deepstalkers renewing their attack. The awe shifted to exhaustion as they continued to pass the same architecture; broken stone pillar, faceless statue, runic warding carved into the wall now silent. The relentless repetition made him yearn for the lyrium caverns - at least the blue light didn't sear his retinas the way a lava burp would.

  Lana gestured at the wall long ago smashed into a thousand pieces and fully blocking off any hope of an exit. It would have required a battering ram to take something that structurally sound down. She couldn't have had anything to do with its collapse. Cullen paused, remembering the grenades she chucked at the darkspawn tunnels. The power at the disposal of the unchecked grey wardens rattled him. How many others knew the strengths the wardens could reach if the need arose?

  "I hope you know of a way through." He picked up a broken brick scattered away from the rest; a symbol was etched into the cracked end. It was hard to make out, but the edge of the triangle looked a bit like a blade's tip.

  Lana shook her head, "Don't need a way through it, I've got something better." She hopped over the lava streams and flattened against the wall. Not expecting her to leap, Cullen subconsciously reached forward as if he could keep her from teetering back into the scalding lava. But Lana was more than capable as she crept along the wall and reached her arm into a crevice carved in the rock. Her free arm flailed for balance while she dipped down and yanked back upon something buried in the rock. Gears roared to life from deep within the walls and along the ceiling. No one had cracked into whatever this was in awhile as dust rained down like a snowstorm. Or perhaps it was debris remaining from when the back wall collapsed.

  The section beside Lana cracked in half, and both sides of what'd seemed impenetrable rock folded in on itself. Despite being created by dwarves, the doors were large enough to let an ogre through. Lana extracted her hand and smiled, "Ta da. This is thaig...well, I doubt you care what it's called."

  Carefully extending his leg over the lava pit, Cullen stepped to stand beside her and tried to pierce into the darkness of this once closed off world. "I should light the torch," he said and tried to fumble with his own mediocre pack.

  "That won't be necessary," Lana said. She flared up her fingers to a brilliant green and placed them against the door. The light caught as if placed in pools of oil. Green sparks raced across the walls, blooming like her fractal snowflake until every arc of magic circling and amplifying through the thaig met at the ceiling. An orb hung above the thaig, a chill circling along its surface. The metal seemed iron in appearance but from the way her magic lit up inside of it Cullen knew it had to be something else. The green light folded around it, arcing off the ceiling like hands cupping around the ball until they lanced together to bring it alive.

  He'd heard of the underground cities of the dwarves but pictured them more like, well, the domain of gophers. Dirt, hole, and dwarf, perhaps with some rock thrown in. But this was grander than any splendor he'd ever seen on
the surface. The ceiling reached so distant, Cullen had to crane his neck up to make out the retreating specks of green light dotting through the crags like stars. Ten spires of white brick stood at attention throughout the thaig, each top skimming across the stone ceiling. The pillars, easily a hundred feet in diameter, were carved with small doorways. Paths twisted up and down through the cavern connecting all the doors like an undulating maze. Woven through the bottom of all the pillars rested a lake still as a mirror. Cullen feared he'd fall into the eternity of the reflection if he stared at it too long.

  "Rather impressive, eh?" Lana said, lightly nudging him in the ribs.

  "Impressive? The White Spire is impressive. This is...I have no words," he choked.

  Lana snorted, "You've been to the White Spire? Even I haven't seen it."

  "There's still time," Cullen said, his eye drawn to a glimmer of jewels still embedded at the top of a spire. Time or scavengers hadn't reached them yet.

  "Perhaps," Lana said before shaking her head, "We need to head this way." She took off, even more sure footed than before, crossing a narrow bridge over the lake. A bone brittle frost crested above the black water, the chill chewing up Cullen's still exposed shins. Lana didn't say he should not touch the water, but every instinct in his body warned him against it. More than likely a finger breaking the surface would draw forth legions of undead from below the briny depths. That was just his luck.

  Lana twisted off the bridge to stand before a wall branching off one of the spires. Her fingers skimmed across the runes carved along it, lighting each tile up in a pattern. They barely deserved her attention, her hand guiding them into place by memory while she watched the metal orb above them. A soft chime echoed through the rock and the floor just before them lifted upward forming a ramp into the sky.

  "I'm beginning to suspect you've been here before," Cullen said.

  She chuckled and strode confidently up the incline. Cracked gold was poured into the edges of the ramp still lifting below her feet. The rock itself hummed from the glow of the magic in the air. "Yes, though the last time it was under a pile of darkspawn."

  "Rather glad I missed that one," he mumbled following behind her.

  "It took an unending amount of time to clean them out. They'd dug in deep for centuries." Now a good fifteen feet above the ground, Lana pointed towards an area beyond the crystal lake where a dark spire was shadowed amongst the white ones. None of her magic light touched the blackness, though not for want of trying as it circled around the edges snapping in anger. "That was their main nest. Unsalvageable, of course. Everything they touch rots into nothing."

  They dipped through the first of the doorways, Cullen having to bend to keep from smacking his head. He was surprised to find the room wasn't empty save for a few statues or other shattered decor. A stone bed big enough for a family rested in the corner. Beside it was an end table baring a mug still tipped over from the last owner. Perhaps he, in running to raise the alarm from the encroaching darkspawn, knocked the cup over in haste then never returned to right it centuries upon centuries ago. He shuddered at the enormity of history encapsulated in a spilt glass. "Why did you clear this place? Is that what grey wardens do, empty thaigs of darkspawn?"

  Lana shrugged, her fingers plowing through another magical lock, this one up to four colors. "Sometimes. I seem to often, though it's more a detour of my mission than the main objective. I..." She paused in her machinations and frowned. Snapping her teeth in thought she turned to Cullen and sighed, "I came here with White. There were other wardens with, it's not wise to go through the deep roads alone."

  "She says now."

  That broke the regretful frown for a moment, but it slotted back into place as she continued to talk. "We weren't trying to clear the thaig. We didn't even know it was here. It began as a research mission."

  "Research? Into what?" All Cullen could see were the marks of the darkspawn and the rotted bones of a long abandoned dwarven empire. Anything of value was long picked clean.

  Lana twisted to him, and a spark burned in her eyes, "I have a theory that at some point before the darkspawn and the blights began, the elves lived with the dwarves. I'd found mentions in an old thaig of elven refugees but refugees from what? My best guess is that they were fleeing the destruction of Arlathan itself. Of course, any translation of ancient elvhen or dwarven is suspect due to the languages having been forged and reforged over the years from scraps of memories. For all I know, the scrolls referred to a word for an elven pie that could also represent refugee, slave, and/or frilly hat. Though my theory would explain the dwarven use of enchantments despite their lack of access to mages. Was it the elves of old who taught them? Or perhaps they were once on more equal footing. Of course neither the dwarven Shaperate nor the dalish would ever admit such a thing was possible. The implications alone...what?" Her musings slipped away as she caught sight of him. Folding her arms across her chest Lana glared back.

  "I..." Cullen shook his head, trying to wipe away the idiotic grin that made it appear he was laughing at her, "you're so, it's nice to see you excited about something that isn't killing darkspawn."

  "Oh," she unfolded her arms and a blush crawled up her cheeks, "well, there was plenty of killing darkspawn here too. Grey warden priorities and all."

  "Of course," Cullen nodded. Lana returned to the panel and, with her full focus, unlocked the next platform. This one extended horizontally above the lake towards a pillar on the far edge of the thaig. Blackness charred up the side of the structure, reaching just below where their newly formed bridge ended. "How come no one's living here now?"

  "Darkspawn make for impolite neighbors," Lana chuckled while stepping out onto the bridge. There were no railings to keep a person from falling the hundred or so feet into the bottomless lake below, but she didn't flinch.

  "Wouldn't dwarves want to take back their own thaigs?" Cullen continued following after her.

  "Before they can attempt it someone will have to cough up the coin to warrant sending an expedition, everything is about coin for the dwarves. And on top of funding they'd also require dispensation from a descher. People can't simply gather a bunch of friends together to take back the deep roads. Dwarven politics, I will never understand it." Lana's rant faded away as Cullen paused at the middle of their bridge.

  In the long stretch of terrors that clawed across his brain, for whatever reason heights wasn't one of them. Still, he couldn't help himself from staring off the bridge into the depths of the lake. The reflection was so perfect he could see the wisps of a blonde man dressed like the fearsome slayers of darkspawn staring up at him from far below. For a foolish moment he wanted to wave at the drowning man.

  He heard an "a hem" and glanced up to find Lana on the other side. She didn't tap her foot in impatience, but she might as well have. They had a job to do and it didn't involve sightseeing. Apologizing, Cullen picked up his feet to join her.

  Lana continued her thread about the dwarves as he joined her, "And while they bicker over who finances such a trip, the darkspawn return. It leaves me to wonder if they have any real interest in gaining back their empire."

  This second pillar was sharper than the others with metal spikes wedged into every corner. Where curves formed the doorways before, this one had the rock chiseled away so it appeared as if the frame was a set of jagged teeth about to bite down. The pillar wasn't meant to be a friendly bedroom or even a neutral foyer. Like the gallows, this place was designed to set a person on edge. Cullen's fingers notched around his sword hilt as he eyed up the doorway. A pair of statues guarded the entrance. Far less stylized than the typical dwarven ones these were primitive as if the sculpture saw no reason to finish beyond cracking away rock in a vaguely human shape. But there was a disturbing fluidity to the movement. One had its arms extended high as if about to pound a fist into an invisible foe while the second held something crushed in its arms.

  "Those statues look as if they're about to come to life," he commented as an aside
, but Lana's eyes flared and she spun around. Ice crackled around her fist while she watched both statues remain perfectly still. Eventually, when the statues continued to not move, she shook the ice off pushing the fade energy away.

  "What is it?"

  "I take it you've never seen a golem before," she took a breath to steady her voice. "We had to fight through them to reach the top spire."

  "Fight? But they're made out of rock." Cullen knocked his fist against the stomach of one and only the thud of solid stone echoed back.

  Lana pointed to a pathway winding below them, "See that stain on the ground?" It was hard to view at the distance, but something dark blotted across the stone just below a statue crashed to its knees. "That was my blood before I blew its head off. Golems. Not fun."

  "Maker," Cullen hissed. He flipped back to the two guardians and eyed them up anew. How long would it take his sword to hack even an inch off their hide? Would even that stop them? A memory tugged on his mind and he voiced it, "Funny enough, I remember a statue that looked a bit like these. It was in Honnleath, in the square."

  Lana whistled softly under her breath, "Oh, you don't say?" She stepped into the doorway, her fingers raising the light runes as she passed.

  Running one hand down the golem's still frozen form, Cullen mused, "It was smaller though." Trusting that the statue wasn't about to come to life and snap his neck, Cullen slipped through the doorway after Lana. His mage was nowhere to be seen. A few stone tables nestled along the wall covered by dust and scraps of broken metal, but no other furniture filled the area. Neither did the grey warden who was his only hope out of the deep roads and away from murderous masonry.