The path was, fortunately, less vertical than it had appeared from the plateau on which the village was set, but not by much. It was, though, not terribly long. The door itself was set directly into the rock of the mountain, flanked by ornate columns on both sides, as tall as ten men and as wide as four. Evidently Genotivi had been captive in this frozen hellscape for long enough that the lack of air didn't bother him at all, and he set about assembling various ancient-looking symbols to make them open. He clapped his hands like a little toddler when they groaned open, icicles - small enough not to be dangers but large enough to be annoying - falling on them.

"More snow, less air," Ten grumbled, stomping on the ground and trying to get some feeling back in her toes. Every step she took felt like she was wearing lead shoes and her lungs cried out in protest while her heart thumped far too hard for the effort she was expending.

"You still have enough breath to complain, though, so I think you're fine," Lelianna observed. She, like Genotivi was too entranced by what was on the other side of the door for her mood to be soured by the whining.

The door did not open onto a temple, at least not the sort that Ten was familiar with. Though, she had to admit, she had never been a connoisseur of such things. She'd seen drawings of some of the grand cathedrals - the fly buttresses and stained glass of the Orlesian style, the domes and minarets of the Tevinter Imperium, and the comparatively austere style of her native Ferelden. This resembled all of them, a little bit, as though some great army of stonecarvers had taken hammer and chisel to a natural cavern the size of one of those great cathedrals, carving statues and columns and apses right out of the black rock of the mountain. Stalagmites became martyrs, stalactites became vaulted ceilings, natural caverns became small chapels with statues of the venerated within. Silly, thought Ten, If you're given a grand cavern, why mess with it? She wandered in slowly, letting her heart relax from the climb. Further in, she could see a great crack in the ceiling through which the clear blue of the sky was visible. She stood below it for a moment, grazing upwards, rather enjoying the sensation of the snow drifting lazily in to frost her eyelashes.

A shadow fell over the whole cavern and, looking up, Ten caught a glimpse of silvered scales as her friend from the other night flew overhead, with no great urgency. She followed instinctively, climbing one, and then another staircase, her curiosity making her forget that, perhaps, walking alone through an abandoned temple where she was fairly sure all the menfolk of the village were waiting to take care of the infidels was not the wisest idea.

At the top of the fourth flight of stairs, rather than a door, there was another great crack in the mountain that opened directly onto an alpine glen. It was significantly warmer, and she could see that a few cracks in the ground hissed with steam. It smelled almost sweet, and after a few breaths, her lungs and heart relaxed, and she felt light, almost euphoric. As she continued, the steam fissures gave way to open chasms with molten magma at the bottom. It was not a mountain glen at all. It was the crater of a volcano, dozing for so long that great trees had grown around the rim.

"Who goes there?!"

She turned. Behind her, fifteen human men had closed ranks between her and the 'temple', all armed, and not with the torches and pitchforks she would have imagined in such a remote place. There was something off about each and every one of them, they looked jittery and nervous.

I really ought to be scared right now…

Whatever, they're not important.

She kept walking the path, between more fissures, seeing the dragon perched atop the craggy rim on the far side. She paused.

Now you really, really ought to be scared.

"Who walks in the valley of the Holy Mother?!" the leader of the men cried from behind her.

She turned, "Just a wee elfin maiden!" she called.

"This is not a place for pilgrims from the lowlands!" their leader called again.

"And yet, here I am," she said.

She heard the cold hiss of blades being drawn.

They are not important.

She felt wind on her face as the great dragon took off, circling the crater as she had the adjacent peak the night before. From where she had taken off, Ten could see that her perch had been a shelf, carved by some tool-wielding hand - human elf or dwarf, she could not tell - into the black rock of the rim. She turned to look at the men, three of whom had drawn steel.

"I don't want to fight with you," she said.

The men scattered as the shadow of the dragon grew larger and closer, and she landed with a great thump, between Ten and the men of the mountain. Up close, it was not a graceful creature at all. She lowered her head to the ground and cocked it to one side, examining her with an eyeball nearly as tall as Ten herself.

"Well, hello there," Ten said, chuckling.

You should be terrified right now. What is wrong with you?

The chuckles turned into laughter.

Nah, why bother being afraid?

"Are you going to eat me?" she asked, "There's not a bloody lot I could do to stop you at this point, love."

Probably would have now if she was planning to.

"So, do you know what all this nonsense is about? Are these inbred idiots friends of yours?"

The dragon raised her head to look back at the inbred idiots. Something in the dragon's movement reminded her of the Reverend Mother.

Reptile's a reptile I suppose.

"Well, darlin', I'd offer you a rat, but I think we're clean out. Probably not worth it for you anyway. But those ones over there probably taste better than I do. I've got four days of road grime on me. What's their deal, anyway? I mean, I'd probably be all right with being worshiped too, but why only the men? That's weird, right? I mean, it's all weird I suppose. Makes about as much sense to worship you as some faceless creator god."

The dragon rose and turned, but kept her great spiked tail still, which was good news for Ten because if she'd let it move with the rest of her the unfortunate elf would have been knocked right into one of the fissures. Ten backed up, and took another look at the shelf on the rim from which the dragon had come. Now that she looked, it was actually quite accessible. There were also steps carved into the face of the rim, winding around and around until they reached it. She made a break for them, the sweet air of the crater giving her strength she had not felt since they had begun their ascent into the mountains.

"Why's she not eating her?" one of the men asked his superior, "The Holy Mother is supposed to dispose of all infidels!"

"Must not be hungry," the raspy voice of the leader called out, "She fed on the last one."

"Wait.. Kolgrim, what's she doing?!"

"She's not supposed to…"

The metal-on-metal roar issued from the dragon's throat. Looking back, Ten saw the men scatter further as the dragon charged at them. Ten made it to the base of the stairs and began taking them two and at time, up and up and up. Twice she fell on her face as the dragon kept roaring, making the rocks around her vibrate, but she kept on about it, and eventually made it to the shelf carved into the crater's rim. It didn't have the look of a chantry building. It felt older. More primitive.

They do tend to bend the narrative to fit features of the natural world, don't they. Turn the old gods into prophets. Rewrite ancient myths to be about the characters of the Chant. Why wouldn't they have found something vaguely resembling a funerary urn and somehow turn that into being about their favorite martyr?

As promised, there was an urn set back into what looked to be an altar, also carved from the black rock of the mountain. It was far larger than any funerary urn or ossuary that Ten had ever seen.

Maybe Andraste was twelve feet tall.

On her tiptoes, she peeked inside. It was full of… something. Definitely a powder, but it certainly didn't look like the ashes gathered from a pyre. No chunks of bone in it, either. She stuck a finger into it. It was granular and slightly sticky.

Taste it.

No! Ew!

Come on.

No!

You're going to feed it to that old man, may as well check it out.

Giving in to the intrusive thoughts, she licked her pinky, stuck it in the powder, and touched it to her tongue. Whatever it was, it was like the opposite of the Tevinter poison that had laid Arl Eamon low to begin with. She felt a rush of blood to her brain, her senses heightening, the world suddenly much brighter and more vibrant than it had been before.

Well shit. Holy ashes or not, this will certainly wake a person up. She grabbed an empty leather flask from her pack and hurriedly scooped some of the substance into it. Recorking it, she looked down where she had come from. Blood streaked across the snow, and she saw that the great white dragon had decided that she had had enough of at least one of her erstwhile devotees. The others were prostrate on the ground, probably uttering desperate prayers to their fickle god.

Well that's not going to work. Ah well, not my landship, not my halla.

She went down the way she had come, descending back into the sweet smelling air of the crater. The dragon swung her head around to look at her again, and a piece of intestine dripped from her jaws, hitting Ten right in the face.

"Manners!" Ten exclaimed, wiping her face.

She walked past the dragon's great talons, and back into the cavern turned temple, where it looked like all of her companions were arguing, huddled in a circle.

"There's a dragon out there," she announced, her voice echoing around the walls.

Six heads swiveled in her direction.

"I got the ashes," she said. She started down the stairs, "Well, I got something out of a really big urn, I didn't see anything else there that fit the description. Not sure exactly what it is, but it'd wake the dead."

Alistair met her halfway, seized her by the shoulders, "We've been looking for you for ages! And… how are you covered in blood again. Andra…probably shouldn't take her name in vain here, but shit, what happened?! Where on earth are you bleeding from?!" He grabbed her kerchief, which was sticking out of one of her pockets, and started mopping at her face, a little more roughly than was necessary.

Ten couldn't help herself. She backed away, started giggling, then chuckling, then laughing like a madwoman, doubling over. Blood began spattering over the snow and stone of the stairs. Wait… am I bleeding? She swiped her hand over her face, and she was, indeed, bleeding from her nose. I did eat shit on those stairs twice… She spat on a snowdrift on the side of the staircase on which she stood and an arc of crimson marred the pure white.

"Child… are you on something?" Wynne hustled up the stairs and stepped between them. She put a cool dry palm on each of Ten's cheeks, mumbled something, and Ten, for a moment, felt more alert than she could remember. But then the feeling of drowning in the thin mountain air returned. It was too much work to laugh then.

"Ohhh that was weird," said Ten. She wiped at her face, and saw red. She looked around again, "What was I just on about?"

"The ashes!" Lelianna cried insistently, "You said you had the ashes!"

She held up the leather flask, "Well, I've got something." What the fuck just happened to… she glanced out into the glen. The men of the mountain had scattered and the dragon had taken off to Maker knew where. From far off, Ten could see that clouds of steam coming from the ground. I was breathing in who knows what, wasn't I. I would have probably been gassed to death if I'd stayed there. Shit. No wonder few returned from seeking this relic.

Genotivi, evidently just registering the commotion, left his carvings and approached her with trepidation as she descended back down into the main cavern.

"Where were you? What did you see?"

"Apparently accidentally breathing in all sorts of shit out there in the crater," said Ten. She shook her head back and forth rapidly, trying to jostle some more sense into herself, "There's something there, to be sure, but… honestly it doesn't look like even the most ancient of Southern Chantry architecture."

"What do you mean by something, girl?"

"Well, come here, hopefully you can see it without getting a lungful of whatever crap the mountain's spewing out," said Ten. She led the monk up the stairs so they were standing at the mouth of the cavern, but far enough away from where the clouds were coming up from the ground that she wasn't afraid of a repeat of the previous nonsense, "Look up there, at the height of the rim. Someone's made a little…. Manmade ledge there. And on it there is an altar, and on the altar is an urn, maybe three feet high and it's filled with this…" She handed him the flask. He uncorked it. Looked inside. Took a whiff.

"That's not what's left on a pyre after cremations," she said, "I mean, assuming your people and mine burn the same, and I don't see why they wouldn't."

"Well…" Genotivi said, "She was the most holy. The Maker works in strange ways. And it was so long ago…"

"Brother, was there an ancient holy site here? Pre-Andraste?" she asked.

"Yes," Genotivi said, "But that's not unusual. More primitive civilizations misinterpreted features put on this earth by the Maker as evidence of their own gods."

"So I think… and I don't know if the dragon has anything to do with this," said Ten, "But… there's some kind of strange air coming from the steam fissures out there that apparently had me traipsing up to a dragon, patting it on the head, then faceplanting on some ancient stairs and not even realizing I'd busted my own nose. That likely would have led any primitive person to think he was experiencing communion with a god. Any modern person without a lick of sense too."

"But what of the guardians?" Genotivi demanded, "Did you not run a gauntlet of tests of your purity?"

"I… walked right past a maneating dragon, had a little chat with it, then ran up some stairs and scooped a powder of unknown origin into this flask," she said, "Would you like to try?"

"It's not supposed to be a metaphor," sighed Genotivi, "The texts were clear!"

"I don't know what to tell you, Brother," Ten said, "This is the location, there is a valley with all sorts of gasses being pumped into the air, a dragon, and a whole ass cult worshiping it. And what looks like a very large funerary urn set right into the side of the mountain."

"We should slay the dragon," Sten said.

"No!" Ten exclaimed, "Leave her alone!"

"We cannot safely study the area if…" Genotivi said.

"No no no no no. Let's game this out," said Ten, "Say we managed to slay the dragon - and honestly I have no faith that the lot of you aren't going to breathe some of that air and just descend into madness like I just did. You're all just lucky I'm a happy drunk. Then armies of pilgrims and Chantry researchers show up, year after year. And what do you think they find? That all of your theories are debunked, Brother, that's what they find. If the dragon stays, you're still right. You're still the pre-eminent scholar on this. The Urn of Sacred Ashes remains sacred to the Southern Chantry, evidence that your doctrine is correct, not the Tevinters'. You're right, the Dalish and Avvars and Northern Chantry are wrong, the Maker is King and all is right with the world."

"So it's not real," Lelianna said, her face entirely put out.

"It's not… not real," said Ten, "There is an urn, high in the mountains, it contains… something."

"And what does that mean for Eamon?" asked Alistair.

It means he's either on the mend already or he's just utterly fucked.

"Just because the writings of one particular ancient tradition didn't get it one hundred percent correct doesn't mean it doesn't work. Wynne, do you know how magic works?"

"Well," said Wynne, "You draw upon the power of the Fade and…"

"But how do you do that?"

"I… just do," she said.

"But I can't do that. Even if I try."

"No…"

"So how do you do it?" asked Ten, "How would you explain it to me if you were trying to get me to do what you do."

"I can't," said Wynne, "You don't have the… sense for it. I can't explain it to you unless you have it."

"And nobody knows why some humans and elves have it and others don't, right? Mages very rarely have children, but somehow there are still mages, generation after generation, and they're always about fifteen percent of the population, right?'

"Five," said Wynne.

"Five's how many the Chantry finds, you know full well apostates outnumber Circle Mages two to one," said Ten.

"I…did not know that," said Wynne.

"How do you think every cult and band of ruffians happens to have a mage with them?" Ten asked.

"I genuinely had not thought about it."

"But the point stands, nobody knows how it works. But it does work. We've all seen it work, right? We've watched this woman bring down a cliffside, we've watched Morrigan over there turn into a damn spider before our eyes. It definitely works. So there's an urn high in the mountains full of something and several reputable legends say it can cure all sorts of things. Maybe the Chantry says it's the ashes of Andraste, I'm sure there's some Avvar explanation for it as well, my own people probably have their own version. Just because nobody truly knows where it came from or what it is, doesn't mean it won't work."

"So we're just going to, what, take it on faith?" asked Lelianna.

"No offense, sister," said Ten, "But isn't that the whole point? If you people could prove, once and for all, that Chantry doctrine was the end all be all truth, there wouldn't be any other traditions, would there."

"I know," said Lelianna, "I suppose I had simply hoped that…"

"That there would be proof?" asked Ten.

"Well, yes. So that all peoples of all lands could be united under the Maker," she said, "To show the world the truth behind the Chant."

Something about what she said, though her voice was small and innocent, chilled Ten's blood more than the frigid mountain air. When they had spoken in Redcliffe, her talk of inquisition had seemed more of a populist statement, the idea that the Chantry could be remade to better serve the people. This sounded more sinister, less that the Chantry should serve all people, but that all people should serve the Chantry.

And what I said to Genotivi was wrong. Fortunately he's more of an academic that he is a true servant of the Chantry, or he would realize that. Truth is, if we let pilgrims up here, the story of this place is going to be whatever the Chantry says. There are more of them and they are better funded than anyone else. They will remake this cavern and that valley in the image of what Genotivi thought it would be. No other interpretations will be permitted, no shamans, no witch doctors. Better it belong to nobody at all than the Chantry.

"Well there's not," said Ten, "You're welcome to go out there and look for yourself, but don't blame me if you absolutely lose your head and wind up in a dragon's stomach. I'm not going to help. I am getting down off this damned mountain, I do not care who comes with me."