Later on, she did not recall the dreams of the next several days, but at the time, as she sat in the dim light of the Fade cradling the bodies of first Daveth, and then Nelaros, and finally her mother, she wanted nothing more than to do what souls were supposed to and move to the Beyond, that unknown from whence you did not come back. But every time she got up to move, to tell herself that the bodies in her lap were nothing but a demon tormenting her, she heard a distinct "No you don't" and wound up… back on her ass in the Fade.

"This is getting ridiculous!" she howled when, for the fifth or fiftieth time, she was knocked back and not allowed to move on.

"Then wake up, you foolish girl!"

And, then, with a gasp, she did. She was in a cluttered but clean hovel, so poorly set up she could see the sunlight fall in through the gaps between the boards that made up the wall. She was on a bed, small, but comfortable. Her hands went to her breast where the bolt had gone in, but found nothing but smooth, brown skin.

"Ah! There you are!"

Her eyes focused on the woman in the corner.

"Morrigan?" she gasped, "What in the…"

"Ah, you remember me. Your wits are still about you. Mother will be pleased," the witch said.

"What exactly does your mother have to do with this?" she asked.

"Well she rescued you, of course," said Morrigan, "And spent the last several days putting your back together."

"Why would she go and do a thing like that?" Ten said, rubbing her sternum uncomfortably, feeling the pressure of the bolt even though it was, apparently, gone, and the damage it had done as well.

"Far be it from me to question her ways," Morrigan said flippantly.

"The others? What happened?"

"The man who was to answer your signal had a change of heart, pulled his troops and left the Wardens to be slaughtered," said Morrigan.

"I don't like the word 'slaughtered.' At least not in this context," she said.

"Every last man and woman," said Morrigan, "Well, except the one who was with you. Not the sharpest arrow in the quiver is he…"

"I barely know the man," Ten said, "Is he here as well?"

"He's only worn a trench in the yard, pacing, while you were taking your time coming back to us."

"Andraste's hangnail," Ten cursed. Her mind had gone several different ways when she had heard the word 'slaughter.' 'Slaughter' meant no more Grey Wardens. Nobody to come looking for her if she took off. But then again, where would she go? She rose from the bed and stretched. She felt fine. In fact… she felt better than fine. Whatever the old witch had done, it was as though every small pain that she felt and learned to ignore was gone. Her knees didn't crack as they did sometimes, the finger she had broken when she was ten or eleven was suddenly straight again. All in all, she was in great shape.

She took stock of the room. Two makeshift beds at her feet, a loft above where she imagined the witches slept. A cookfire and basin. Her armor was piled in the corner, and the skivvies she wore under them had been washed. Instead, she went into her pack, and put on a brown frock she had packed in Denerim. She wasn't fighting darkspawn here, no reason to put on several extra pounds of leather.

"I suppose I should reassure him," she said, finger-combing her hair and tying it back with the bit of leather she always kept around one wrist for that very purpose. She reached for the kerchief that was normally kept in the pocket of every dress, but did not find it. "Ah well, I suppose I'm not going to win any grooming competitions today."

"What ever are you talking about?"

"Well, not that you'd know," she said, "But… it's generally considered polite for women of the working class to keep their hair up and covered. So it doesn't get in the gentleman's food or laundry… or sheets, of course."

"What does 'working class' mean?" asked Morrigan.

"I… don't even know how to explain it," she said, "Given you've never lived among people. I guess the short version is… at least in the cities, they divvy up the population. There's the nobles, they don't work - oh, they pretend they do, but they don't, and they're in charge of everything. Then there's the working rich, the ones who own successful businesses or have skilled trades. Then there's… the rest of us. The rabble. The ones who do the scut work and Maker forbid complain about it. It's actually much more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it. But there are different rules for how we behave, and dress. You don't look your betters in the eye, and for women like me, we cover our hair in polite company."

"Well you'll find none of that here," said Morrigan, "Polite company I mean. What about the other one, isn't he also working class?"

"I'm not sure," said Ten, "But at the end of the day, he's human, so he'll always rank higher than me. Out there, anyway."

"So you don't trust him, entirely," she said.

"I don't trust anyone, entirely," said Ten.

"I'm human, my mother is human," Morrigan said, "As far as I know."

"Yes," said Ten, looking at her, "That's my point. Look, in any case, whether I trust Alistair or not is entirely up in the air, like I said before, I barely know the man. And men… well, you never know what you're dealing with."

"They sound like ravening beasts," Morrigan said.

"They aren't, not all of them. The problem is that you can't tell the ones who are from the ones who aren't until it's too late."

"You make the world sound terrifying," Morrigan mused, "Perhaps I have been better off, away from it all here."

"I'm frankly a little jealous," Ten said, "Ah well. Off to face another… ugh." She opened the door and squinted as the sunlight hit her eyes.

"Ten!" exclaimed Alistair, who had been standing at the end of the clearing in which the hut stood, looking off over the swamps, "You're still with us." He ran towards her, and she instinctively took a step back.

"Yes," she said, "And in one piece no less."

"The arrows you took… Maker's breath I thought you were done for."

"I only remember one," she said.

"By the time the old woman showed up, you were doing the best impression of pincushion I've ever seen."

"The old woman, you mean Flemeth?"

"Is that her name?"

"I think so," she said, "Why, does that mean something to you?"

"They didn't tell you the tale of Flemeth when you were a girl? The powerful witch who… never mind that now, but… well that makes it all make quite a bit more sense. You'd just passed out, they started coming back up the stairs, I hacked up as many of them as I could, but I was getting tired, and I was wounded, and… she just walks out of a hole in the world, tells me to pick you up and follow her. Didn't seem right to question her at that point, so I threw you over my shoulder, and we walk back through the hole, and here we are."

"Morrigan said it was a slaughter," said Ten.

"Duncan, the Grey Wardens, even the king," he sighed, "Just… gone."

"Well shit," Ten sighed, "How long have I been out?"

"Three days," he said, "Heard them two arguing, the mother and daughter. The daughter said you were too far gone, the mother insisted it was… how did she put it… 'not time for your thread to be cut.'"

"Well. Here I am," she said, thinking of the dreams that had plagued her. She knew, from what the old healer at Ostagar had told her, that mages could enter the Fade with the proper ceremony, and wondered if it was not a demon, but Flemeth herself that had kept her anchored with the corpses of the past.

"And you don't know how grateful I am for it," said Alistair, "I was going absolutely mad with worry. You see, it's just us two now. We're the only Grey Wardens left."

Something in his tone made her blood run cold. Before, the quest had been simple enough. Duncan points, you go. She trusted the old man, he had had decades of experience. Now, she realized that she alone between the two of them knew anything about anything. If Alistair had been in charge in the tower, he would have rushed in there, hacking about with his sword, and the two of them would have perished before even making it to the beacon. She wasn't sure if he was, as Morrigan said, not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, but he certainly just didn't take the time to think about things as she did. Hell, he didn't even know what a spinal cord was. That meant that if anything at all was going to happen right, she was going to have to be the one to make it happen. All the freedom she had felt on that journey to Ostagar left, and she, once again, shouldered the burden. It felt comfortable, strangely. Duty was something she understood.

"I've been a Grey Warden for all of four days," she protested, as much to herself as to him, "Three of them spent unconscious. This is your quest. This is your fight."

"You can't back out on me now. Leave me alone with this," he said, unable to keep the pleading edge out of his voice, "You can't just leave me alone."

"Oh I can't?" she challenged, "Are you going to run me through, like Duncan did Jory?"

"I hadn't even thought about that," he said, "Please, don't make me think about that."

His armor is weak in the armpit. If he's going to cut me down, he'll need to raise his arm and expose it. And his left shoulder is injured, unless Flemeth took care of him too. I'll have to figure that out. Play along until then.

"You won't need to do that," a familiar voice intoned over her flurry of very dark thoughts, "She'll come with you, all right."

"And how would you know?" asked Ten, "I am, after all, a criminal. You never know what I might do." She turned to see the crone striding towards them. There was something different about her. She was still an old woman, of course, but she wasn't holding herself like an old woman. She looked stronger than she had before, as though the wrinkled face and silvered hair were a costume she was wearing over a much younger woman's body.

"You understand duty," said Flemeth, "You always have. And right now, your duty is to end the Blight. And to end the Blight, you're stuck with that one."

Ten sighed, looking at the ground, a little ashamed that she had considered absconding. The witch was right. This was her job now, at least for the foreseeable future. "You're right," she said, "I'm sorry. And I must thank you for whatever you did exactly to pull me back from the brink. It's quite a skill."

"Skill!" the witch laughed, "Yes I suppose those magicks must look quite skillful to one such as you. So you've been repaired. You're in good working condition, which is good, as there is work indeed ahead."

"I imagine so," sighed Ten, "So I know what happened to the king, and I know what happened to the rest of the wardens, what happened to the horde?"

"They are holding still," said Flemeth, "Waiting, as it were. For what, I do not dare to guess. I would suggest you two move out before it changes its mind."

"Move out to where, exactly?" Ten asked, "Do we go to Orlais? Find the Wardens there?"

"No time," Alistair said, relieved that she had conceded, "Even if we made it there before the snow clogs the mountain passes, they'd have to call the forces in from Weisshaupt. By the time that even happened, there's no way we could move an army of that size through the Frostbacks until this time next year. And that will, in all likelihood, be too late. But… we have those treaties. Mages, dwarves, elves. And, if we make it to Redcliffe before Loghain does, I can get the ear of Arl Eamon there. His troops were not at Ostagar. He doesn't have an army like Loghain's, but he has fighting men at his command."

"He'll listen to us?"

"He was Cailan's uncle," said Alistair, "I think he'll listen."

"I see," Ten said. He's talking like he knows the man personally. File that one away for later, "Redcliffe is two week's journey on foot, and I don't suppose any of the horses made it out of that one alive."

"No such luck."

Ten stared pensively out at the wilds. That was a strange move on Loghain's part. Almost planned. He knew the king was a fool, I could even see that. He's the father of the queen and they had no children. This was a grab for power. Nobody was supposed to make it out of there alive.

"I'm thinking Loghain is banking on us having been killed with the rest of them," Ten said.

"Clever girl!" Flemeth said, "Indeed, the cry has gone up throughout the land that it was the Grey Wardens who betrayed and murdered the king."

"How did you even know that?" asked Ten.

"How did I do any of this?" Flemeth asked.

"As to the healing, that's pretty standard stuff, from what I've heard. As to the rescue, I'm betting that you probably have an eluvian stashed somewhere in there," said Ten, "From what Alistair described."

The old woman paused, "What makes you think that?"

She didn't predict that. All right. The upper hand.

"He said you stepped out of a hole in the world," she said, "Perhaps the shemlen have heard of Flemeth, but we elves know our own history well. Every bit of it."

Flemeth looked at her for a long moment. "You must be very frustrated," she said, "It's dangerous for a woman like you to be clever."

"Dangerous! I only managed to get myself sentenced to hang and then conscripted into an existential fight for the very earth I stand on!" Ten said sarcastically, "But that doesn't answer my question. How do you know what Loghain's up to?"

"There have been broadsides on the road," said Flemeth.

"Well, shit. I suppose a bit longer as a fugitive won't kill me," Ten said, "Until it does."

"So we're not just dodging darkspawn," said Alistair, "We're going to have to deal with anyone who thinks they're being a hero, bringing our heads to the Teyrn."

"Well you can't go out on the road dressed like that then," said Ten, "And I can't be armored up either. In fact, Flemeth, do you have any men's clothing?" she looked down at herself.

"Do I look like I keep men's clothing around?"

"Why would you need… what are you talking about?" Alistair demanded.

"Human men and elf women do not just travel about on the roads together," she said, "Not two by two, and certainly not armored up. We'll look out of place. People will make assumptions and those assumptions will make them hostile. I don't want any run-ins with racist villagers in addition to darkspawn and the teyrn's men. So it's either we're two women or two men, and, no offense, but I don't think any of my skirts will fit you."

"Well, this might make it easier," Flemeth said, "Morrigan!"

The younger witch exited the house, "What is it mother?"

"Remember how you've been positively itching to see the world?"

"I suppose I have," she said, suspiciously.

"You're going to accompany these two, at least as far as the next village," said Flemeth, "See some of our little corner of it, at least."

"I'm what? Well, I suppose. As long as she's in charge," Morrigan said, gesturing at Ten.

"Her?" Alistair protested, "She's not in charge."

"I'm not in charge," Ten said. I'm going to have to be in charge. At least for now. Until we can find someone who knows… literally anything about anything.

"Don't be foolish, lad," Flemeth said, "You were about to walk out of here all but announcing who you are to the world. You'd do well to listen to this one."

"I'll listen to her, of course I will. But she's not my commanding officer. You don't just get to be a commander your fourth day on the job. And I say, I don't think it's a great idea to have an apostate mage along with us."

"Apostate?"

"You know, a mage that's not with the Circle. She leaves these wilds, whatever creepy wards are keeping this place safe, the templars will be after us for sure."

"If the templars find us," said Ten, "We had no idea. She knows this part of the country better than either of us. And we can't rely on my half-assed medical skills to keep us alive if I take any more arrows."

"All right, fine, but don't come croaking to me if she turns you into a toad."

"Morrigan, you're coming, and you don't have to talk to him if you don't want."

"Well won't this be an adventure!" Morrigan exclaimed, clapping her hands together. Her tone was sarcastic, but there was real excitement behind her pale eyes.

"You won't have to talk to him… but it's better we look like a regular family displaced by the blight. Gentleman farmer, wife, maidservant. Off with the armor, we're traveling in disguise," Ten said.

"What did I say about you not being in charge? And you're really expecting me to run about with nothing but my undershirt between me and all the arrows of the world?" Alistair protested, but she could see he was beginning to come around.

"You can keep your sword by your side," said Ten, "Even normal men carry swords. But Morrigan, you're going to need to cover up a bit, unless you want every man mistaking you for a lady of the night. Here, you take this frock I'm wearing, it's big on me anyway and it'll cover you to your knees at least. Not perfect but we'll make it work."

"I don't like this," Alistair said, "I feel naked without the armor."

"You don't like it, I have to go around looking like I'm married to you," Morrigan scoffed.

"Look, if we were flying in on griffons with a whole host of wardens at our backs, this wouldn't be necessary," Ten said, "But there are only two of us. If we get murdered by bounty hunters, that's it, the whole country is done, not just us. We have to stay alive, at least until maybe there's help from Orlais. And you said yourself, that's a year or more away."

"She's terribly bossy isn't she," Alistair said to Morrigan.

"Don't talk to me," the witch replied.

And so, half an hour hence, a gentleman farmer and his wife, newly displaced from their land, took to the road, while a serving girl trailed behind them.