interesting thought. The air was still in the cavern, if heavy and moist.
A great steel structure stood half submerged in the lake, just off the rocky shore and over a hundred feet across. It was now mostly crumbled from rust and covered with white streaks of limestone. Many long pipes reached from it into the rock walls, those, too, brown with rust and falling apart.
It was impossible to tell what the purpose of the structure might have been. The dwarves didn’t say, and merely stood at the entrance to the cavern and hung their heads in reverence. The sounds of dripping were all they could hear. Nalthur eventually remarked to Maric that once there had been hundreds of pipes, that they wouldn’t have been able to see the roof of the cavern for all of them. Now most of them had fallen, no doubt rusting beneath the water on the cavern floor.
Maric asked what it had been for, if it had been some kind of fortress, but Nalthur only looked at him in disgust. “You humans wouldn’t understand,” he muttered.
The way up to the surface required them to march along the precarious edge by the water until they found another door much like the one that Maric and the others had found all the way back in the hills. This one, while covered with lime and rust, was still closed. The lime was so thick on it, in fact, that they couldn’t even see any evidence of a lock mechanism.
Nalthur immediately sent his men to work with their picks, chipping away at the lime and rust to see what lay beneath. The dwarf seemed unsure if it was going to do any good, however. “Even if we manage to get through,” he muttered, “there’s no telling what’s at the top. You humans might have built over it, for all we know.”
Rowan frowned. “I don’t remember anyone mentioning anything about a passageway going down to the dwarven outpost.”
“It would have been sealed centuries ago,” Katriel said. “When the darkspawn took the Deep Roads, the townsfolk would have closed it up to keep them from attacking the town.”
Nalthur sighed. “Then we’ll have two seals to break, if we can.” He glanced at Maric. “Otherwise you’ve come all this way for nothing.”
Loghain stared at the cloudy water in the cavern, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “If you swam out that way, would it lead out to the ocean? Could you swim up to the shore above?”
The dwarf looked at him incredulously. “If the sluice gate is open. And if you can hold your breath long enough. And if the pressure doesn’t kill you.”
The ringing of the picks went on for hours, until finally the great doors had been scoured enough that several older dwarves could take a closer look at the lock mechanism. One of them, Nalthur assured Maric, had been a smith “when he was alive.” After a time, the smith reported the bad news: the lock was rusted shut. They would need to burn their way through.
This process required the use of acid, which the dwarves brought forth from their equipment wagons in the form of small vials full of brackish liquid. They opened the vials with tongs and poured the acid into the lock. The result was a lot of acrid smoke and blue flame, and after three applications the smith finally declared the door ready to open.
Nalthur commanded the Legion to attach several large hooks to the door, each tied to a rope that five dwarves pulled on with all their might. They strained, gritting their teeth and digging their feet into the rock, and ever so slowly the doors opened. They groaned at first, letting out wrenching sounds that reverberated throughout the cavern. Then they began to give, parting by inches and generating an excruciating squealing noise as the rusted metal dragged along the rocky floor.
As the ancient doors opened more quickly, a great cloud of dust began to billow in, blown in by what was immediately recognizable as fresh air. As the dust made the dwarves cough, Loghain stepped forward.
Fresh air? His brows shot up. If there were fresh air, then that meant . . .
Suddenly a great form began to rush forward out of the dust cloud. It was a stone golem, over ten feet tall, and with a great roar it began to swing widely with its fists. The dwarves reacted with surprise as the creature charged into their ranks, its blows sending them flying into the air. Many of them slammed against the rocky walls, while others were flung into the nearby water.
The dwarves began to fall back in shock, drawing their swords as Nalthur charged toward them. “We’re attacked!” he bellowed. “To arms, Legion! To arms!”
Coming from behind the golem, a crowd of human soldiers began to rush into the chamber with swords drawn, and they clashed against the dwarves that held their ground. The sound of steel meeting steel rang out, the golem continuing to swing its great fists. As the deadly melee spread, Loghain’s eyes went wide in horror.
These were their own men. The standards on the soldiers that had surged out of the tunnel were Maric’s own.
“Stop!” Maric shouted. He ran forward into the line of dwarves, heedless of the danger and waving his hands. “Stop fighting! For the love of the Maker!” Nobody listened to him as the fighting surged onward. Blood was being spilled. The stone golem swung a large fist dangerously near Maric, crashing onto the ground and toppling him.
Loghain and Rowan rushed forward immediately to Maric’s side, drawing their weapons. They glanced at each other, wondering if they would need to engage their own men. The irony was that they might have traveled so far only to end up battling the very forces they had come to lead.
Loghain kicked back a soldier that had been about to strike Maric with his sword. “Don’t be a fool!” he roared. “This is Prince Maric!” His words were lost in the shouts of battle and the crashes of the golem’s fist against stone and armor. He looked about, hoping to spot the golem’s mage amid the chaos, but saw nothing.
“Stop fighting!” Loghain roared again, Rowan pushing several men back beside him and trying to pull Maric to his feet. Nalthur saw what they were trying to do but he couldn’t order the Legion to retreat. There was no room on the narrow rocky ledge, and trying to pull back would only end up with them being slaughtered or falling into the water and drowning.
The stone golem charged at Loghain, letting out a bellow of rage. It reared up over him, both fists ready to crash down on his head, and he held up his sword, bracing for the impact. . . .
“Halt!” rang out a new voice from behind the golem, and the effect was immediate. The golem went still.
