Darkness surrounded Mellian, she held her hand out to her face to try and catch some outline of her fingers, but there was nothing there.

Perfect.

If this was going to work, then they were going to have to remain unseen for as long as possible, preferably for the entire night if everything went perfectly. Thankfully, they had already made it through the most stressful part of the evening. They had made it into the manor unseen.

"Well Alric, looks like your information paid off after all, if this is the right place that is."

The scruffy-faced dwarf grunted at the insinuation.

"It's the place alright, my sources say that they have seen hordes of people coming into this house, but only half of them ever leave. There's something rotten going on here."

Again, the dwarf mentioned his mysterious sources. Mellian didn't know who his sources were, or how they survived the purge of the slums a few days back, but at this point, she wasn't going to question it.

Both Alric and Mellian had lost sisters that day, and tonight they were going to find out what happened to them.

Feeling their way around the basement, they eventually came to a set of stairs. Mellian called Alric over, tapping on the bottom stair with her knuckle so that he could follow the noise.

"Do you need me to carry you up the stairs little man? The steps look awfully high."

"Do you need me to punch you in the shins knife-ears? Nobody likes a funny elf."

Mellian smiled to herself, although no one else could see it through the darkness. Alric was just too easy to get all riled up, she couldn't help herself sometimes, and besides, it helped her to forget about just how badly things have gotten over the last few days.

Mellian can still remember running through the alleys, holding her sisters hand, frantically trying to get away. The end of the alley getting closer, Shanara crying behind her, a sudden giant figure looming, a scream...and then she just kept running.

It had been her responsibility to die with her sister that day, and she failed. The least that she could do is find the person responsible for killing her now.

They made their way up the staircase, and eased open the door. It was a relatively standard manor for Starkhaven, long corridors, several rooms that no one probably ever uses, and-

"Wait, do you hear that?"

Mellian pressed her ear up closer to the opening in the doorway, she could never understand why Alric had better hearing than she did, after all, she was the one with the bigger-

And then she heard it.

Moaning, screaming, inhuman grunting, echoing faintly down the hallways. Whatever it was still came from quite far away in the manor, but the horrifying sounds still sent a chill up Mellian's spine.

"Is that...torture?" she asked.

Alric didn't respond, but the look in his eyes told her everything that she needed to know. It was most certainly torture, and judging from the worry on his face, Alric was imagining his sister on the rack.

He shoved Mellian out of the way, and scampered out into the hallway. She didn't even have time to come up with some kind of witty insult before she had to chase after him. Alric wasn't a fool though, he had pressed himself up against a wall, and was still doing his best to sneak, albeit incredibly hasty sneaking, throughout the building.

Mellian followed behind, doing her best to swivel her head to keep an eye out for any of those guards that she had seen that night. Miraculously, she wasn't seeing anyone around, if there were any guards about, they were keeping out of the hallways.

Thank the Maker for that at least.

As they progressed closer and closer to the source of the noises, Mellian grew more and more concerned. At first she had just thought that the screaming was constant, someone wailing into the night without taking any time to breathe. When the voices became clearer however, she realized her mistake.

It wasn't one constant voice, it was a chorus of several different wails and screams.

In her mind's eye, she could see Shanara on a table, joining the rest of the room in their cries.

And she ran.

Alric didn't question it, there was no protesting the noise they were making, or how dangerous it was, suddenly nothing else mattered. The cries grew to the point that they were almost deafening, and they found the door that they were coming from. With her sister's face in her mind, Mellian threw open the door.

And almost threw up.

The room was lined with various figures of different heights and builds chained to the wall. Their hands above their head, shackled at the wrists, and their ankles nailed to the floor. Not shackled to the floor, but nailed. When Mellian looked into the face of one of these prisoners, she knew that her sister could not possibly be among them.

Because the twitching, writhing, screaming face before her belonged to a Darkspawn.

The inhuman screaming wasn't from torture, it was simply from something completely and utterly inhuman.

"Andraste's ass, they're keeping the damn things prisoner?" Alric asked.

Mellian was about to respond, when the stench in the air finally reached her nose, now that the shock was gone. It smelled as if the entire room was rotten, Mellian had a hard time believing that even darkspawn could smell this bad. As she looked around the room, she found the sources, or sources of the strong odor.

"It's not a jail Alric, it's a slaughterhouse."

She pointed over at a series of hurlocks and genlocks slumped on the wall. These ones were not moving or screaming, instead they were collapsed on the floor, throats slit, surrounded by blood.

"What sort of sick fuck would do something like-"

Voices.

Not screams, but human voices coming down the hallway. Panic rushed into Mellian again, had someone heard them running down the hallway? Was this some sort of routine checkup after all? Regardless, only one thing was important right now.

"Hide!"

The elf and dwarf hastily scanned the room, looking for anything that could be used as a hiding spot. Unfortunately, there was no furniture in the room, everything had been cleared out so that they could hold more 'prisoners'. There was no way that they were going to try and hide next to a thrashing darkspawn, so it was impossible, unless...

"Here!"

Alric was one step ahead of her, and was calling her over to the pile of dead darkspawn. It was disgusting, but it seemed to be their only option. Together, the two of them rolled over a couple of the bloodied corpses, crawled underneath, and rolled the corpses back on top of them.

"Leave it to the dwarf to find the most disgusting option." she whispered.

"Leave it to the elf to not know when to shut up!"

They both fell completely silent, and as motionless as they could manage. The voices entered the room now, and even through the body on top of her, Mellian could get a good look at the two soldiers. They were both wearing the same style of nondescript armor that the soldiers were wearing the night of the purge, but they somehow looked a lot less threatening right now. They apparently were continuing their conversation from out in the hallway, completely unfazed by the room that they just entered.

"-have to bring it to one of the mages anyways, why can't they just come get it themselves?"

"Because nimrod, we're the new guys, so we get to do the dirty work. It's either this or change the candles, and this is one hell of a lot faster."

"Well, we're not the new-est guys..."

"Don't remind me."

The soldiers walked up to one of the hurlocks standing only a few feet away from Mellian and Alric, and for a moment, they both stopped breathing.

"Just get this over with, alright?"

One of the soldiers reached up and pressed the hurlock's head against the wall, pulling out a knife. While they other one held up a large bucket beneath the thing's neck.

Mellian was forced to stifle a gasp as she watched the blood drain from the creature into the bucket. It raged against the soldier who was holding it down the entire time. It screamed and gnashed it's teeth until the last drop of blood fell, and it finally joined it's brethren slumped against the ground.

"Ugh, I hate doing that."

The voices started to walk away, but Mellian couldn't take her eyes off of the now dead hurlock. It was the first time she had ever seen anything die in front of her, and she could already feel herself scarred.

"Hey, do you think that you could bring this back to the mages? I want to go watch the ceremony tonight."

"Again? Haven't you been every night so far?"

"What? I like to watch"

"You're a sick fuck, you know that?"

"Says the guy who just drained a hurlock."

"Fine, go, what the hell do I care."

The voices faded down the corridor, and when Mellian was certain that they were far enough out of range, she whispered as quietly as she could to Alric.

"We're following them, right?"

"You're goddamn right we are."

Bottom of Form

Top of Form

They had managed to tail the soldier without being seen, another minor miracle of the night. Mellian tried to be thankful for that, rather than being disgusted at the gore that covered her now. They had stopped tailing him when he reached this last door however, as they could finally hear other voices coming from inside when he opened it.

Positioning themselves as best they could, they peeked through the doorway. A man in full plate armor stood in front of a row of kneeling prisoners, their clothing seeming to indicate that they were all from the poorer sections of town. The ones that were hit during the purge. A soldier stood behind every prisoner, at Mellian's estimation, there were probably twenty prisoners in the room, with twice the amount of soldiers.

The soldiers all wore the same nondescript armors, but the commander wore something different. When he finally turned their way, Mellian could see what the emblem on his armor was.

"He's a Grey Warden!" she whispered down to Alric.

As all the different possibilities ran through her mind, the apparent commander continued to speak.

"-not believe it, but it will be an honor for you to join our ranks. And we need each and every one of you, in this, our most dire hour. I apologize for taking you all away from your lives and families, but those of you that survive will find a new life, and a new family here with us."

Those that survive? What does he…

The first prisoner was pushed forward, and the commander received a large goblet from one of the soldiers. The prisoner was crying, but the man behind him forced his head upwards, and opened his mouth.

And the commander forced the liquid in the goblet down the man's throat.

The man tried to resist, but a soldier held his hand over the prisoner's mouth, and another held a sword to his throat. The man begrudgingly swallowed, and a few seconds later, started convulsing on his knees. He held his hand to his throat, and seemed unable to breathe. His other hand fell to the ground, his body heaving the entire way. As the fight drained from the prisoner's body, he collapsed into a heap on the floor.

The soldier behind the man put his fingers to the man's neck, checking his pulse. Then he looked up, and shook his head to the commander.

"Very well," the commander said. "Next!"

Mellian instinctively began to move forward, but Alric held her back.

"What do you think you're doing?!" he angrily whispered.

"I have to do something!"

"The only thing you'll do tonight is get yourself killed. Look, we know what's happening here, but they outnumber us four to one, you'll be dead before you take two steps into that room."

Mellian looked back into the chamber, there really was no chance, and her heart sank as she saw another prisoner brought before the commander. She looked over the faces of the prisoners, and thankfully, she didn't see Shanara among them, and no dwarves either. Either their sisters were already dead, or haven't been brought to this room yet.

"Mel, we need to go, we're no good to these people dead."

Alric was already pulling her away from the door, apparently not wanting to look at the next ritual himself. She knew that he was right, and she knew she had to go, especially if there was still a real chance to save her sister.

So she turned to leave, and prepared herself to sneak down the hallways once more.

But she couldn't shake the guilt of what she had just done. In leaving, she had just condemned nineteen more people to their deaths.

I'll save the rest of you. She thought to herself

I promise