The main floor was eerily silent as they moved up the stairs as quietly as they could. The light was better up here, but the whole place had taken on a grim feeling. It didn't smell wonderful either, not the in-your-face stink of a canal in high summer, but an edge of rot that tickled Ten's brain in a way she decidedly did not enjoy. She paused in the servants' chapel, taking in the very expensive tapestries on the walls.

"I really have to insist we don't light anything on fire here," Alistair said.

"Oh come on," said Ten.

"You want to bring down the Maker's wrath? Go ahead, I'll have no part of it when you get struck by lightning and carried off by packs of righteous wolves."

"I don't think that's in the Chant."

"Do you even know what's in the Chant?" he asked skeptically.

"... got me there," she admitted.

She sighed and turned to move cautiously into a hallway. It appeared to be some sort of common room for the servants, and it was actually rather well-appointed. Rough-hewn but clean tables and chairs, a not uncomfortable looking couch, and a few bookshelves filled with some actually quite salacious literature. Footlockers, belonging to servants probably long dead, lined a large storage shelf that was recessed into the wall at around seven feet, and filled two of the three large alcoves above each of the three doors. She stepped closer to one door and paused as she heard at least seven low growls from the other side. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of dog shit and rotting flesh.

"Assuming that's the kennels," she said, "Do you suppose anyone's been feeding the hounds? Smells like they already took care of the kennelmaster."

"Doubt it," said Alistair, "But hungry dogs don't know the difference between friend, foe, and food."

"They also can't climb," said Ten looking at the empty storage alcove above the door. It could have fit probably six of the footlockers, and so would likely accommodate one man and one elf so long as they folded themselves up.

"If you'd put half as much effort into being a better fighter as you do into figuring out how to avoid a battle, all of this would be much simpler," he pointed out.

"Look, I have no delusions about my capabilities as a warrior. I could be the best trained fighter in the world and it still wouldn't matter the minute I'm in close quarters and something bigger and stronger gets its hands on me," she said, "So forgive me if I try to avoid it as much as possible."

"That's when you usually stick it with something poisonous, no?"

"Sure, and that'd work on a person, or a darkspawn, but I highly doubt it'll work on something animated by magic," she said.

"So you're going to release a pack of starving half-feral war dogs?" The words were skeptical, but the tone conveyed that he was coming around to it.

"Well you didn't want me to set anything on fire. Think we can both fit up there?" she asked.

"Probably."

"All right. You get up there in that alcove, I'll throw the deadbolt, and hope like hell I can get up there before the dogs realize the door's unbarred."

"Are you sure you don't want me to do that?"

"If I'm slower or the dogs are faster than I'm planning on, I'm relying on you to pull me out of there. If you asked me to do the same I'm afraid you'll be disappointed and also chewed to pieces," she said.

"Ah. Yes. Chewed to pieces wasn't on my agenda for the day."

She approached the door to the kennel cautiously. She could hear panting and whining behind it. She flinched as one of them sounded like it had thrown its entire weight against it.

"Fuck," she muttered.

"Come on," Alistair said, "This is your harebrained scheme to get out of a fair fight, don't lose your nerve now." He'd procured a sturdy ladder from the other end of the room and leaned it up against the door to the kennel. He crawled up it and, crouching, situated himself in the alcove.

She sighed, and steeled herself. She reached out, and pulled the deadbolt loose. She had time to get two steps up the ladder and her hands on the ledge above her before the door flew open, knocking the ladder to the floor. Before she could fall, Alistair had caught her under the arms and helped her scramble the rest of the way into the little hiding place, one foot narrowly missing being clamped between the slavering jaws below.

"They get you?"

"Nah," said Ten.

"So what now?" he said, "We're basically treed."

"They're making a lot of noise," she said, tucking both legs under her as the hounds snapped and growled and jumped at her, "If there's anything else between us and the courtyard, it's probably going to come and investigate."

"So, what, we just wait here?"

"Have some patience, man," she scolded, "Would it kill you to just sit with your own thoughts for five minutes?"

"Oh sure, because when you're being snapped at by a bunch of hounds is just the best time for meditation."

"You need to learn to just tune it out," Ten said, "If you pay attention to everything that's out there to kill you, you just go mad… oh wait, shit, here they are."

She thought after the night she'd had she would have been used to the eerie, jerky movements of the animated corpses that began pouring into the room, but they were even more unsettling up close. The hounds, who hadn't eaten in several days at this point, saw a richer and far more pungent meal than the one they had cornered, and turned their attention to the walking dead, barrelling into them, ripping and slashing and taking down mouthfuls of half rotten flesh.

"Oh, that's…" Alistair breathed, "That is disgusting."

"Rather impressive… oh no," Ten said as one of the dogs successfully disemboweled one of the corpses and began running around the room, unraveling intestines as it went, "Well, there's a lesson in anatomy I suppose."

"It'd look rather festive if it didn't smell so terrible."

"Bet that's how they use them for holiday decorations in the Imperium."

"The very height of fashion."

"I'll let you tell Isolde we redecorated."

"This might actually beat my all time best work," he said, "I remember I spent the summer when I was nine catching frogs and kept them in the reserve cistern in the kitchens. Nobody ever used it. Nobody even knew they were there until I opened it up during the grandest party of the year."

"Why does everyone love frog pranks? What did the frogs ever do to you?"

"Most of them made it out. But you could hear the fine ladies squealing all the way down the docks."

"Glad I'm not the only former juvenile delinquent in the room," Ten chuckled.

"Well, Isolde did have her footman beat the absolute tar out of me afterwards. Probably my first concussion…"

"Whoa whoa whoa," she protested, "You're also catching up to me in the 'randomly saying something incredibly dark like it's normal' department."

"What, your dad never hit you?"

"No!" she exclaimed, appalled at the suggestion, "He's the lecture-and-grave-disappointment type. You know that's not normal, right?"

"Well maybe that's why you grew up to be an ax murderer and I grew up to be… holed up in a storage loft with an ax murderer."

"Wait… what in the fuck is that?" she asked. The trickle of corpses had stopped, but at the end of them was a… thing. It looked like nothing so much as if a bonfire had sprouted legs and started moving. Something about it set her spine tingling and chilled her blood where it ran.

"That would be a demon," Alistair declared, clearly happy to know something that she did not.

"A demon? Those are real?!" Ten reacted, her voice rising several octaves from pure existential dread.

"Of course they are. And you didn't have to make that noise right in my ear."

"Well I'd jump down and do it again several feet away except apparently there's a fucking demon there! I thought that was just a metaphor! Something the sisters made up to scare us!"

"So this whole time you're defending the blood mage, you didn't know that they tend to attract literal actual demons?"

"Well fuck," she said, "No, but… fuck. I have to rethink some of my life choices."

"Well if it helps the dogs seem to have this one control," he pointed out.

"Of all the strange things I've seen, this might be the strangest," she said, "Never seen dogs take apart a sentient fire… thing… damn. So they can be killed? Like, you hit them and they go down?"

"Generally, yes. They actually can't take much of a hit, you mostly have to worry about them getting in your head. I've seen a new templar turn and walk right off of a cliff when instructed to," said Alistair, "But that one, the walking bonfire, isn't that sort. It'll just get in your face, the worst it can do is scare the shit out of you and singe your eyebrows off."

"How long do we give it before we conclude it's safe to go down?"

"Not too long, I hope, my legs are going numb. And I think I'm deaf in my left ear now, thanks for that."

"You're welcome. Well I don't see anything else coming out of… whatever is down there," said Ten. The dogs had ceased their snarling and were happily munching on what they had already killed.

"What in the fuck happened here?"

They looked down to see that Jowan had arrived at the mess of body parts festooned around the room. The hounds who were still awake - for some had curled up in the gory mess to sleep it off - looked up at him, but did not react. The mage put a hand over his mouth and gagged, but managed to keep whatever he'd taken in down, though Ten imagined that had not been much if the jailer had stopped coming three days before.

"The dogs got loose," said Ten.

"Did you… let the dogs loose?" the mage asked.

"Maybe," said Ten, "See anything else out there?"

"Well I'm not looking while you hide in the ceiling," Jowan said.

"Fine," she relented, and jumped to the floor, hand on her hatchet

The three of them stepped gingerly over the sleeping hounds and piles of corpses, moved out through the kitchens, and into the courtyard - where the corpses Ten had seen from the cliff across the inlet were no longer lying in wait. It did appear as though every nasty creature in the place had been attracted to the fight outside the kennels and subsequently perished.

Well, except for one. Lady Isolde was sitting with her head in her hands on the long staircase up to the castle's main entrance. Ten strode up right up to her.

"You made it!" Isolde exclaimed as she saw Ten approaching. She ran up to her, expecting… Ten didn't know. A squishy hug? A comforting pat on the back? In any case, it certainly wasn't the palm of Ten's hand - the left one with the ring on it - across her face hard enough to make a sound that echoed around the courtyard and mountains above.

"Tell me, my lady," Ten said, finally taller than someone as the noblewoman fell back on her ass on the flagstones, "What part of this was planned and what part of it was you being just an idiot?"

"How dare you!?" Isolde spat, "I see the Grey Wardens have made you forget your place!" She scrambled to her feet, "I will have you whipped for that, elf!"

"By whom? Your staff is all dead," she said, "Thanks to you."

"Guards!" Isolde shouted. Her voice echoed through the empty space. Nobody came.

"Guards!" she shouted again. Nothing. Isolde looked around. Indeed, everyone who had been on her payroll looked to have been killed, resurrected, and killed again. Isolde looked to the templar and the blood mage, who hung back in the doorway. Both of them shook their heads.

"Don't look at them," said Ten, "You're talking to me now. So let's talk. Where's Teagan? You take advantage of whatever misplaced affections he has for you to get him up here and feed him to the demons?"

She ducked as the arlessa lost her temper and took a swing at her, missed by a mile, and tripped over her skirts, tumbling facefirst onto the flagstones. Ten dragged her up by the back of her collar and got right in her face, speaking lowly.

"And what happened to the Arl? What, you couldn't take the old man yourself?" Ten whispered, "Had to have him poisoned?"

This enraged the arlessa enough to struggle free of her grasp, ripping the back of her dress in the process, turn, and catch Ten across her left cheek with four long and unnecessarily sharp nails. Ten's eye watered, but she made another grab, got ahold of the arlessa's long ash blonde braid, fallen free of its gilded net, and jerked her head back so hard Isolde made a noise that was between a grunt and a sob, and Ten was able to get her forearm across her throat, and forcibly turn her face to look at the men in the doorway.

"Now you can look. You see, I found your pet blood mage," she said, right in her ear, "I didn't even have to torture him to get him to spill your secrets. So again I ask you, what was planned, and what was stupidity?"

To her astonishment, the arlessa's face crumpled, and she started sobbing, the tears diluting the blood flowing from her nose from the dive she'd taken.

Crap. Oh well, nobody ever accused me of being nice.

"I just wanted to help my son," Isolde keened, "Surely you must understand. He's only a little boy!"

Any pity Ten had for her flew away like a flock of pigeons before an unruly toddler. Oh, now you're worried about the wellbeing of little boys. Cunt.

Ten loosed her, but gave her a smack upside the head for good measure. She backed off, satisfied the arlessa wasn't going to try anything else, and assessed the scratches on her own face with the back of her hand. They stung, and they were bleeding, but she'd certainly had worse from better.

"Helping your son would have been sending him to the Circle," said Ten, "Where they know what they're doing. You could have even sent him abroad if you felt the Circle here was too restrictive. But no, you wanted him to go through his entire life pretending to be something he's not, just so he could keep his title, and in doing so…"

"I've created a monster," Isolde admitted through her tears, "Jowan!" she wailed, "I'm sorry. Just tell me how to fix it!"

"I could…" started Jowan, hesitantly approaching the women, but keeping enough distance that he could escape if the claws came out again, "I could enter the Fade and attempt to get him away from whatever demon has him in his clutches. It's just… I would need a sacrifice."

"No, no, absolutely not," Alistair protested, grabbing the mage by his shoulder harder than was necessary, "We are not fixing blood magic with more blood magic. I'm sorry, Isolde, but you know what happens to possessed mages."

"You would say that. I won't let that happen. Not my Connor. He's still in there. He comes through sometimes! You can kill me, do whatever you need," Isolde said, looking at Jowan, "I'm responsible for this."

Ten sensed movement out of the corner of her eye, and saw that Teagan had exited the main hall who knows how long before, and chosen that moment to approach the group.

"Why are they bleeding?" he asked Alistair.

"Teagan!" exclaimed Isolde, extricating herself from the conversation and appealing to her brother-in-law for help. He stepped back before she could reach him, and she settled for holding her bloody nose and looking generally pathetic.

"How much of that did you see?" asked Ten, finding her kerchief in one pocket and dabbing at the fresh gouges on her face. How much trouble am I in this time?

"Enough," said Teagan, "Isolde, would you like to tell me why I just spent fifteen minutes telling the filthiest jokes I've ever heard to your eleven year old son with absolutely no control over what came out of my mouth?"

"It doesn't matter," Isolde insisted, "This… elf attacked me! Look, I'm bleeding too!"

"You're bleeding because you misjudged a punch and fell on your face on the ground," said Teagan.

Isolde muttered a fairly dirty word in Orlesian, which didn't really have a direct translation but Ten understood to mean someone who did unspeakable things to barnfowl.

"Where is he now, if he's not messing with your head?" asked Alistair.

"A very loud sound from the courtyard scared him. He legged it back up to the tower, I think he's hiding out," said Teagan. He looked nervously upward, to the tower that Ten estimated she had seen the mirror's flash the previous evening. Was it the kid that was trying to get my attention? Did they shut him up in there?

"Connor didn't ask for any of this," said Ten, "He's just a kid. There has to be another way. Jowan, let's just say, and this is only a hypothetical, there was an apostate mage who may or may not be nearby. If I knew of such a mage, and if she were willing and able to come here unmolested by the clergy or the lord of this land, could she do it without the whole …human sacrifice… thing?"

"Oh, so all the while giving me all sorts of shit about it, you've had an apostate in your pocket?" Jowan scowled.

"Well she's not a blood mage… that I know of," said Ten, "Probably thinks she's above that."

"If she's not she'd need a vast quantity of lyrium," said Jowan, "Which the Circle keeps under lock and key."

"Circle's not far, " Alistair observed, visibly relieved, "And they did sign a treaty…"

"Well I'm not about to start dipping my toes in human sacrifice now," Ten said, "If there's another way."

"I'm not sure how long we can hold him off," Teagan said, concerned, "Please don't tarry. Murdock can take you across, he's got a swift boat that can handle the surf further out on the lake. He should be able to get you there by sunset."

Though the villagers appeared to have repaired the bridge, Ten still kept both hands on it as they crossed back over to the village and jumped inwardly every time it swayed. As soon as they had hit solid ground, Alistair started cracking up, small chuckles at first, but finally doubled over, tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks.

"What on earth has gotten into you?" Ten asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The look on her face!" he wheezed, "Like she thought you were going to hug her and tell her everything was going to be alright, not to worry and BAM!"

"It wasn't that funny," she said mildly, "And may I remind you we're off to get our hands on one of the most heavily controlled substances in the country to save your play-cousin from demon possession."

"I know, I know, but come on, let me have this," he said, "I've never seen someone slap the actual soul out of someone else's body before."

"Fair enough," she said, starting to giggle a little, his laughter infectious.

"And she tried to swing at you too! And then just… whoops! On the ground!" this set him off again and she paused to let him recover his breath, "I have been waiting for so long to see that, and I didn't even know I needed it."

"You're welcome, I guess?" she said, but her giggles had became chuckles, which hurt her face. She went into her pack and dabbed some ointment on it to dull the pain and slow the bleeding, "Could have warned me she keeps her nails sharpened into fucking talons. Guess I won't be getting by on my looks anytime soon."

"And she still hasn't seen what we did outside of the kennels!"

"You mean what the dogs she didn't bother to feed did. And it's the servants' quarters, I doubt she cares."

"She will when nobody comes to clean it up for her."

"Fair enough," said Ten, "Come on, we should at least tell the others where we're going. And maybe try to get ahold of yourself, you keep up that hyena impression, they'll probably think you're possessed too."