inaccurate the longer they were surrounded by constant darkness—they encountered a thaig, a cavern where the dwarves had built a settlement. There was a large amount of debris and rocks at its entrance, perhaps due to some kind of cave-in, and it required hours of labor to clear a passage. Once through, they stood at the edges of a place no dwarf had likely touched in living memory.
The flickering light of their torches didn’t reach very far into the thaig, but what they did see evoked a memory of grand stone buildings rising high up toward the upper reaches of the cavern. The walkways between these buildings had once been lined with giant columns carved with lines upon lines of runes. Now most of these things were collapsed and in ruin, jagged stone skeletons covered in massive webs.
Here the webs were everywhere. They hung from building to wall like gentle gauze, and as the cavern rose, the webs seemed to get thicker and thicker until the torchlight couldn’t penetrate them any longer. It was as if the webs kept this place cocooned, suspended out of time in darkness and quiet.
“Careful,” Loghain warned softly, moving his torch so as not to light the webs. Such a blaze would have spread quickly into the upper reaches of the thaig, and likely brought all of it raining down upon their heads.
“Do you feel it?” Rowan asked, stepping uncertainly forward amid the uneven debris. She touched her cheek and looked around with concern. The others opened up their eyes wide, feeling the same thing she did: a gentle brush on their cheeks, the slightest sense of movement in the dust-choked air.
“It’s air,” Maric breathed. “There’s air flowing here.”
He was right. Air was coming from somewhere high up, and if they looked carefully, they could see the faint glowing webs waving ever so slightly overhead. Perhaps there was a sort of hole leading up to the surface. The dwarves must have had chimneys of some kind, or perhaps these were the ducts that Katriel had mentioned.
There were also sounds. As the four of them stood there, the distant clicking became more prominent. It started and stopped, but it was definitely there. After hearing little else but their own movement, such alien sounds were very easy to notice.
Katriel blanched, her fear made noticeable by her agitated glances up into the darkness despite her effort to conceal it. “What . . . what are those sounds? Rocks?”
Nobody answered her. Even she didn’t really believe it.
“Should we go back?” Rowan whispered.
Maric shook his head. “There’s no way around that we saw. It’s either forward or it’s all the way back.”
There was really no discussion to be had. Loghain moved forward, sword held cautiously in front of him as he stared nervously up into the webs above. “If we need to, we’ll have to burn them.”
Maric stepped closely behind him. “Wouldn’t that be worse?”
“I said if we need to.”
They proceeded slowly, keeping their backs toward each other and blades out. Each step was carefully placed among the rubble, and they made not a single sound. They barely breathed. Each of them slowly waved their flickering torches in the air before them, trying to discern anything in the dark ruins. But all they saw was ruined archways and stone columns and more rubble. The shadows danced mockingly in the silence.
They crept through what appeared to be a long causeway, cracked and crumbled between the towering walls of gutted buildings. One of the walls still had faded chips of colored paint, turquoise and red and the remnants of what might have been a face. The eyes were the only part of the face still discernible, eyes that stared out at them in mute surprise.
Loghain stopped, and Maric almost bumped into him from behind. They were at the feet of an enormous statue, a giant warrior that reached up hundreds of feet into the air and could very well have been holding up the ceiling of the cavern. It was tarnished, and the details were lost in the shadows, but it was easily the largest thing he had ever seen in his life. It looked almost as if it had been made from pure marble.
“Maker’s breath,” Maric breathed, staring up at it.
The others turned, and Katriel walked up to the feet of the statue, her eyes wide. “Don’t touch it,” Loghain cautioned her, but she ignored him. The statue appeared to rest on a great square column, itself covered in dusty runes.
Katriel held the torch in front of the runes and swept some of the dust off with her hands. “This . . . I think this is a Paragon,” she whispered.
“A what?” Maric asked.
“A Paragon. They are dwarves that achieve legendary status among their people. The greatest of their warriors, the founders of the houses.” She brushed off more of the dust, enraptured by what she was unveiling. “I think this one was a smith.”
“Wonderful, it’s a dwarven smith,” Rowan muttered. “Can we keep moving?”
The elf shot a glare with her green eyes. “A Paragon isn’t just anyone. They were the greatest dwarves that ever lived. The dwarves revere them as gods. This—” She stared up at the expanse of the statue above her. “—is something the dwarves would pay a great deal to know about.”
“Then let’s tell them about it. Later,” Rowan insisted.
Loghain nodded. “We need to see if there’s a way through.”
Reluctantly Katriel nodded. She stepped back from the statue’s base, taking one last sad look and shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite believe it. Only Maric saw the single strand of thick, glistening thread that dangled behind her. He was already leaping forward as she was suddenly jerked up into the darkness.
“Katriel!” Maric shouted, grabbing on to the elf’s legs as his sword fell to the ground. She screamed in terror, and while Maric’s weight pulled her back down, they both dangled above the ground precariously.
Excited clicking sounds suddenly erupted up in the dark webs above, as well as all around them. They echoed and circled, and many shadows began to move just at the very edges of their torchlight.
