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The first time she feels it, she’s at Ostagar, watching from the high tower. She could feel them coming before she spotted their torches, far off in the wood, but the feeling creeps on her slowly enough that the nauseous fear feels like her own.
...
They’re barely out of Lothering when she feels it again. The warmth in her chest, the goosebumps on her skin as every hair stood on end. Her blood boiling, she could hear her pulse in her ears. Her steps slowed and she drew herself off of the trail to lean against a sapling.
Leliana was the first to notice. “Tabris, what’s wrong?”
“I’m going to be sick.”
Then Alistair's hand was on her shoulder. “You’re not. I feel it too.” She stole a glance up at him and he stood alert, pulling his hand away from her to the hilt of his sword. “They’re close.”
A growing buzzing made it difficult to hear what he was saying.
“Who’s close? What are you two going on about?” Morrigan said, giving voice to Xanara’s sudden confusion.
Xanara watched his lips move in response, but couldn’t hear him over the clamor of a thousand intruding voices humming an eerily familiar tune. She stood, eyes raking the forest for the source of the sound. It must be all around them. The voices were strange, but she belonged to them, the call pulled at her very bones, it was on the tip of her tongue, it was…
Darkspawn.
She covered her ears from the noise but the humming was louder beneath her hands, pushing and growing into deafening silence. Then a voice, foreign but unmistakable, whispering in her ear. Xanara whipped her head around at the sound, drawing her daggers from her back. Another whisper and she turned again, surveyed the forest.
“They’re getting closer.” She said.
“How many, you reckon?”
“Two? No,” she listened, and another low hiss echoed between her ears, “three.”
“I think you’re right.”
The tempestuous whispering turned to growls and the Wardens held their ground, weapons poised. Something more joined the blood pounding in her ears. It set her teeth on edge, her eyes darting to every shadow in the dusk-filled forest. The edge of that uncanny melody, just beyond memory, calling out and setting her blood on fire. She strained to see anything, to sense the blighted creatures coming closer with something more tangible than the fear that gripped her chest at the sound.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
“The… that fucking song.”
“I try not to.” He said darkly.
The growling had grown into screaming in Xanara’s head.
“Here they come.”
...
Now, she’s stopped counting how many times the feeling has gripped her. It is as easy as breathing. She feels it first in her palms, as they become tacky against the leather of her gloves. The mind of the darkspawn isn’t as focused as it once was, but it’s almost welcome after so many days spent alone. She stretches her neck to relieve the ache in her ears from the silence, but it doesn’t work, as ever. The hiss and screech of approaching darkspawn between her ears set her to move her feet, dancing in blood and blade to the Song that unites her with the things she slaughters. The last genlock falls to the dirt and the melody… doesn’t fade. She spins, eyes keen and ears open for any more. But no voices ring in her mind, only the song.
Oh no.