The Calling

The Deep Roads were a single night that stretched on into infinity.

From these emerald waters doth life begin anew. Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you.” He walked to Nicolas’s side and put a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder. Nicolas looked up at Maric with gratitude, tears welling in his eyes.
“In my arms lies Eternity.”
The body slowly sank beneath the surface

The Old Gods will call to you,
From their ancient prisons they will sing.
Dragons with wicked eyes and wicked hearts,
On blacken’d wings does deceit take flight,
The first of My children, lost to night.
—Canticle of Silence 3:6, Dissonant Verse

As they began to spread out, however, Kell suddenly hissed, “Stop!”
Genevieve turned back, annoyance clear on her face—which instantly turned into alarm. The hunter stared upward, his eyes wide and stark with fear. She followed his gaze at the same time as Maric did, as they all did, and they saw what it was that had kept the darkspawn from pursuing them. Something descended down upon them from above, something large. Something with great, leathery wings.
“Dragon,” Kell breathed.

“I don’t hear anything,” Genevieve growled.
“Exactly! Where are the darkspawn? I can barely sense them!”
The Commander seemed stunned not to have realized it herself. They stood for a long minute, doing nothing, before she finally waved them to proceed. “We need to find a way through. Whatever reason the darkspawn aren’t following us, perhaps we can use it to our advantage.”

get away from the throne.

And there was not a single other corpse within thirty feet of it.
The dwarves had been trying to

Fiona breathed in sharply. “Look on the doors!”
In the light he could see it clearly: The inside of the doors were covered in scratches. Long, shallow scratches everywhere. Some of the skeletons still reached up with their limbs, still clawed at the door. It was the same on the wall by the doors. Some of the finger bones were worn down to the knuckles.

“No. Just the normal sort of cheese dreams.”
“Oh! I get those,” Maric chuckled.
“Really? Fiona was using these spells to turn the darkspawn into giant pillars of stinky cheese, and I kept thinking, ‘Why stinky cheese, of all things? I hate stinky cheese.’ But she wouldn’t use a different spell and got really angry at me.”
“You mean like that?” He indicated the elf, who was indeed glaring at them with seething disapproval.
“You are both idiots,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes.

The first of the Maker’s children watched across the Veil
And grew jealous of the life
They could not feel, could not touch.
In blackest envy were the demons born.