This time, instead of skirting the outside of the building, their smelly lupine escorts showed them to the center of the atrium. Picking their way over centuries-old stones and bricks, Ten could see in the center that a staircase descending directly into the bowels of the earth was still accessible, if largely overgrown with roots and vines.
"I look forward to the day I am no longer expected to just walk right into creepy holes in the ground," Lelianna muttered.
"I take personal offense to that," Oghren stated, "Some of the grandest halls in Thedas are only accessible by creepy holes in the ground." Without hesitation, he followed Swiftrunner down the stairs.
Walking carefully, her hand following a large and twisting root which formed something like a bannister, Ten followed Oghren into the darkness below. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but they did adjust, for the place was lit by torches ensconced in the walls every few feet. They burned with something resembling fire in shape but not in nature. It was pale green, which was strange but not unheard of - Ten had seen fancy houses with copper pipes burn before under absolutely innocent circumstances - nothing to see here, please move along - but that came with a smell and, of course, the heat of the flames. These seemed to burn without heat, and more importantly, without smoke. Unable to resist, she climbed up the wall, the stones giving her plenty of handholds, and reached out to pass her hand through the flames. There was no searing sensation, it felt more like the snap one sometimes got in the winter while wearing too many layers of wool and touching anything metal. That, though, was a momentary shock, this was pinpricks of that particular pain, over and over. She snatched her hand back and jumped back down, shaking it out.
"Did you just climb the wall to touch the veilfire?!" Morrigan asked.
"I wanted to see what it was…" Ten said, looking at her hand. It didn't look like anything had actually hurt her.
"I bet your father had to keep you on a leash as a child."
"He still would if he could get away with it," Ten agreed, determined that there was nothing more she could learn about the strange green fire, and kept walking down the stairs.
They were, in Oghren's expert estimation, three stories below the earth when the staircase opened up into a natural cavern. No longer lit just by what Morrigan had called 'veilfire,' but by a beam of sunlight filtering through a crack in the ceiling, Ten's eyes had to adjust yet again. When they did, she saw that the spirit woman thing she had communed with the previous night was sitting in the loop of a great tree root hanging from the ceiling like a child on a swing, her hair still covering her strategically. Surrounding her were more werewolves. Ten had not counted precisely, but it appeared to be more than fifty. Combined with the twelve or so that had escorted them from the entrance to the ruins…
Did Zathrian really expect us to fight a whole village of them? Or did he not realize just how widespread the plague had become?
"Is she what you saw last night?" Morrigan asked quietly.
"Her? Yes," Ten replied, "Congratulations, you are not the most scantily clad creature that popped up out of the woods one day."
"Oh good, you've decided to join us," Witherfang said, interrupting before Morrigan could counter, probably with something she thought was scathing, "Zathrian has beaten you here."
She gestured with one clawed hand to a staircase at the other end of the cavern from the one they had descended.
Oh shit, did they already maul him to death? Can he be mauled to death? Ten did not worry long, for the Keeper was there, sitting in the middle of the stairs, and in one piece.
"All right, well, everyone's in the same room, everyone's internal organs appear to be where they belong…" Ten said, glancing back at her companions, who had fanned out behind her, eyes on the werewolves, "Sounds like it's time to parlay."
"I had a simple ask," Zathrian sighed in exasperation, "Kill a wolf and bring me its heart. Do I need to look over your shoulder while you do it?"
"This one does not do 'simple asks,'" Oghren said, "She's not satisfied until she knows everyone's business. I could have warned you, but you only wanted to talk to them…"
"Well, you didn't tell me the werewolves were organized," Ten exclaimed, ignoring the dwarf's commentary, "Or that there were this many of them. If we'd run down here blades in hand, we would have been slaughtered!"
"You could have found a way," the keeper snarled.
"Yes, this is the way," Ten said, "You can't solve every problem by hitting it with a pointy stick. Sometimes you have to bargain!"
"How did bargaining with humans serve your grandfathers?" he demanded, scorn dripping from his voice.
"They got to keep indoor plumbing," Ten said, "And if we make it to eight, we tend to live into our eighties, so there's that."
"So you are a society of dead children and the elderly," Zathrian scoffed.
"And you rely on manipulating outsiders to fight battles that - despite you starting them - your own people are not capable of," Ten said, "And speaking of everyone's business, you were very eager to learn mine as well, uncle. You won, you got in my head. Tell me, what did it look like, the night before last? Was I standing there at your tent talking to my damned self?"
A flicker of surprise crossed the keeper's face.
"Oh, you thought I wouldn't run into the actual Lanaya eventually?"
He chuckled, "To everyone else, it looked like you paused for but a moment."
"You needn't have worried, it would not have raised any alarm bells with us even if she had stood there talking to herself," Lelianna offered, "She's been going slowly… what is the phrase… off the deep end for months."
"So what are you here, uncle?" Ten asked, "I thought the whole thing was you needed someone else to do your dirty work for you."
"Well, since you have proven yourself so woefully unprepared," he said, gesturing vaguely at the werewolves all around, "I had come here to offer my assistance. They cannot touch me lest they seal their own fates for all eternity."
"You think I would not?!" Swiftrunner growled, and this pronouncement was followed by bonechilling howls of agreement from the rest of the werewolves, echoing around the cavern's high ceiling.
"Stay calm," Witherfang commanded, and the howling quieted as quickly as it had begun.
"It is only thanks to the grace of the Lady that we have not slaughtered your entire clan," Swiftrunner growled, "Our numbers have swollen, old man."
"Hush," Witherfang commanded, her voice a cool breeze on a hot day, "Remember your humanity."
"Humanity!" Zathrian exclaimed, "What do you know of the nature of humans? If anything, they are less savage in this form. You. Red Widow. Tell the Lady what humans do when left to their own devices."
"Well, that's really down to the individual human," Ten said.
Zathrian let loose a frustrated blast of air through his nostrils, almost sounding like a wolf himself. He pointed his staff at Zevran, who was hanging back in the shadows by the staircase. Ten decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was half hiding in order to have the element of surprise should the encounter turn violent, and not just putting himself in a primed position to run like hell. "What about you, boy? With your woman's tattoos? They told me what you said, you were kidnapped and sold before you took your first breath."
Zevran looked shocked that someone was actually addressing him, then shrugged and said, "If I encounter the men who did that, I will certainly make them regret many of their decisions in life. But.. they are not here today."
"You know your children are still stuck here," Ten said, raising her voice before the conversation could continue, "Parts of them, anyway. What's left of them."
Zathrian paused, turned back to her, "So you know then, why I have done what I have done."
"I do," she said, "I understand why you did it."
"Because you did the same thing. Wouldn't you kill all those men again, if you could?" he asked, a glint in his eyes.
"Oh, of course," Ten said, "But I'd get sick of it eventually. I actually," she looked around at her companions. Eh, whatever, they can hear this if they want. "I recently tried something called 'letting it go' for the first time."
"What do you mean?"
"My mother was stabbed in the back by a human man when I was a child," she said, "I only learned that recently, actually. And then he got dropped right in my lap, a few weeks ago. He was fair game. Nobody was going to miss him. I basically had carte blanche to kill the man. So I followed him one night. I was sitting on this balcony above the inn where he was getting shitcanned and probably harassing a few ale wenches, waiting for him to come out. Then he did and he was… sloppy fucking drunk. I wouldn't even have needed to try; I could have just followed him and waited until he got too close to the river. One little push…"
"You let him go," Zathrian said.
"Well, I sat there for about twenty minutes mulling it over. Wondering what good me being the one to end him would do. If I had the stomach to watch a man drown. I'd never done that before."
"Drowned a man?"
"Oh, no, I had definitely done that. But having been in that situation before I never hesitated. Every other time it was like I wasn't even in control of my own body, it just… got to killing with little to no input from my head. But this was different."
"How?"
"Well that's what I realized, sitting there like a crazy person on a rooftop. I realized that the difference was I played no part in he did," she said, "I was four years old. But… the other ones, part of it was my fault. I won't delve into the specifics here, and I doubt you would understand them even if I did, but what happened to my cousin and my husband would not have happened if not for a few things I did. It wasn't my fault, of course, but… I do carry some of the burden. By making mincemeat out of everyone who hurt them, I was also making up for my own guilt in what happened to them."
"So you don't feel vindicated?"
"Yes, of course. But you can't torture and kill your way into forgiving yourself."
"You assume a lot about how I feel about the matter," Zathrian said, "Or perhaps you have just internalized their hatred for your kind and feel the need to blame yourself when you are not to blame. Wouldn't you kill them again if you could? Those men who made your cousin a shell of a woman?"
"She's not," Ten said.
"What?"
"My cousin's not a shell of a woman. She's actually doing pretty well."
Zathrian blinked a few times. He had not anticipated this. Hundreds of years and he can't see beyond the end of his nose.
"She has nightmares, and she used to rely on the bottle a little too much - but that was before as well. She's not broken. Neither am l," said Ten, "I mean, come on… if every woman who was misused by men never recovered, there would be very few women - elf, human, dwarf or otherwise - left in the world. Did you ever talk to the women who came to your clan from the outside?"
"When they become Dalish, they cast off their previous lives."
"Well, if you had, you would have learned quite a bit of what it is to take the blow and keep on moving. Maybe instead spending the centuries punishing men and women who are not even born when your children were taken from you, you would be wondering why your daughter took her own life when so many other women just… got up and kept going."
Ten saw it coming and ducked as a bolt of lightning snapped loose from Zathrian's staff. It hit the opposite wall of the cavern, leaving a scorch mark but otherwise doing no damage.
"Did you learn nothing about baiting mages?!" Lelianna hissed in her ear.
"She took her life because she was with child," Zathrian said, his voice strained.
"Maybe," Ten shrugged, "But I doubt it."
"How do you know?"
"Because I refuse to believe the Dalish, with their wisdom of the ages, can't do something as simple as ending a pregnancy," Ten said, "I haven't lived centuries like you have, but it seems to me that for all your years, you have not taken in new information in very, very long time. And of all the things you got me to spill, there is one thing, I think, that differentiates my cousin and I, from my late husband, who, from what I've gathered, actually did try to end it all."
"And what is that, since you seem to know everything?"
"His father was a total asshole about it. Said he… let it happen."
Zathrian paused, recognizing the words.
"And I think you know that," said Ten, "And I think this is as much about punishing yourself just as much as it is about the men who did it in the first place. It's one thing to curse a handful of people, but you lost control of it and it has grown and spread. You have walled yourself up in the worst day of your life, along with everything and everyone around you."
From somewhere above, a familiar ghostly voice began singing a disembodied dirge.
"Have you not noticed? Everything here is trapped. I've spoken to your people. They say you're the only Keeper who insists on Elvish only. It's not just that you want to protect them from outsiders. You want to keep them from speaking to them at all. Getting new ideas. Doing anything but the same thing, over and over and over again."
"I have to protect them. It is my role."
"Their greatest threat right now is the monsters you created," Ten said, "Look how many of them there are. If we fight them, we will die. And they will not stop with us. They will go to the surface and they will find your people and they will slaughter them too."
"And what's to keep them from doing that if I do what you're asking of me?"
"I'm going to go ahead and assume that at least some of these werewolves were elves before they got the curse," said Ten, "If everyone got changed back, and it came down to a fight between… twenty or so Dalish plus us against fifty or so turnip farmers, I like those odds a lot better than against seventy werewolves."
"Uncle," one of the werewolves said, as gently as a werewolf could say, "Please don't leave us here like this."
Zathrian looked down at the one who had spoken, looking for the remains of presumably one of his followers in the yellow predator's eyes. He was silent a long moment, breathing in and out with his whole body. Looked over the crowd of black shaggy heads. Doing the math. Knowing that he had vastly underestimated the full consequences of his vengeance. And finally, he nodded.
"I am actually ready to end it all at this point as well," Zevran muttered, "Do you suppose there is a vault in here for me?" He let loose a yelp as Lelianna elbowed him in the ribs.
"Perhaps it is time," Zathrian said again. Slowly, he descended towards Witherfang whose figure had begun glowing with an unearthly light. As he moved further down, Ten swore she could see his face and frame aging with each step. Witherfang rose from the root she was seated on, and walked towards him. They met at the base of the stairs. Clasped hands for a moment. There was a shift in the energy around them. The light seemed to change, and seventy or so werewolves dropped to the floor of the cave as though they had been bowled over by a gust of wind.
"Well, congratulations, Ten, you yapped him to death," Oghren said after a momentary silence. He walked up to where Zathrian had stood, stepping unceremoniously over fallen werewolves as he went. "Actually…" he poked around on the ground, "It looks like you yapped him right out of existence." Indeed, where the two figures had stood, there was nothing.
"Like I've said before, she's good at it," Alistair said, shrugging, "I swear this whole bloody thing is going to end with her standing on the top of some cliff somewhere giving the archdemon a lecture on the virtues of labor solidarity and he'll just keel right over."
The werewolf whose plea had put the final nail in the coffin was the first to rise. Divested of a shaggy black coat, she was an elfin woman in her thirties. Her brown hair was coming loose from its braids, but all in all, she did not look much worse for wear. She looked around, blinking furiously, no doubt adjusting to how her new eyes reacted to the world around her. Beside her, two more elves rose, both young men. They took a little less time to look around, and without further ceremony, bolted for the stairs before the rest of their former lycanthropic brethren could rise.
It took the humans a little longer to get up, but eventually they did, one by one. They were a strange bunch. Some would not have looked out of place in any of the villages along the south road that Ten and her companions had gone through, others looked like they had stepped out of the pages of a history book. Even the children - of which there were a handful - looked exhausted and dazed.
"What… what do we now?" asked one woman. She put her hands to her throat, clearly not used to the sound of her own voice, "Our homes are in ruins, our… our families are long gone…"
"Get out of these woods," Ten said, "Go east to the coast, and make your way north from there. I don't know how long you've been out but there's a fishing village seven days north. Do not even think about going near the Dalish camp. And don't come back to these woods. This land is not for you."
"Lady, you could not pay me an emperor's ransom to set foot here again," an older woman with her grizzled hair up in an old-fashioned wimple, "Come on folks, we'll figure it out." She beckoned with one thick arm for the others to follow her, but then paused and turned back, "Hey, who's the viceroy, by the way?"
"The what?" Ten asked.
"Seems like it might be good to know who's in charge of this shithole before I venture back into it. Who's the viceroy now?"
"Who was the… viceroy when you got here?" Alistair asked.
"Jehanne… Ambrosie… some fucking Orlesian shit. Danbois or something," she said.
"No, she was sent back twenty years ago," a middle aged man with a slight Orlesian accent offered. He was stout about the middle and wore a cap that looked suspiciously like it was made out of the skin of a raccoon. "The last one I knew was Lucien Aulvais L'Emprisien."
"Well, I have some news for you folks, perhaps you should sit down," Alistair said.
"Now who's giving a lecture," Ten muttered as he launched into an admirably concise and, as far as she knew, accurate account of the Fereldan war of independence.
At the end of it, the woman in the wimple burst out in raucous laughter, "Ha! I knew it would happen eventually!" she turned to the Orlesian man, both middle fingers in the air, "Suck it Bouffard! The first thing I'm doing when we get back to civilization is having you deported!" She started up the stairs. Bewildered, the rest of the humans began following after her.
The Orlesian man in the raccoon hat finally followed along, calling, "Even a savage Fereldan monarch would not listen to une vieille bique comme toi."
Still a bit dazed, the newly reformed humans filed up the stairs.
Eventually, only the one-eyed man who had been called Swiftrunner but had also identified himself as Willem Coltswain two days before remained. He was younger than Ten thought he could have been, though she supposed that the hundreds of years he had been in wolf form had preserved his features. Those features were, she realized as soon as he rose along with the other humans, familiar. He stayed there, looking completely bewildered, his good eye roaming the room, no doubt seeing it in full color for the first time.
"Orlais is just another province," he said slowly, "How were they in charge here?"
"Well…" Alistair started, realizing that perhaps he had not gone far back enough with his history lesson, "The Imperium isn't… here anymore."
"So who rules in Minrathas?!"
"Well, it's not… gone gone," Alistair said, "It's just not… here."
"So in the time I've been here…" Coltswain said, "Two empires have been and gone. And now what, we're just some… backwater nation?"
"Finally, a Fereldan speaking some sense," Zevran chuckled.
"That is the gist of it," Alistair said, glaring at Zevran.
"So the… it's still there? The Imperium?"
"As far as I know, if the maps are to be believed," Ten said, "They just don't… run things around here anymore."
"I… I gave up everything because the auxiliaries were recuiting," he said, and sat down heavily on a stone, rubbing absently where his left eye had once been, "And they sent me to this Maker-forsaken wasteland. And now, everyone I've ever met is dead. Even Zathrian, that old…" he shook his head, "I guess there's no governor to grant me my pension is there."
"I doubt it," Alistair conceded, "Legend has it the auxiliaries burned the rolls themselves so they couldn't be retaliated against as collaborators."
"Well. I suppose at least I don't have to do the same thing every day anymore," he said, "Thank you." He rose to leave.
"Wait," Ten commanded. He froze. Turned around, "How'd you lose that eye, Master Coltswain?"
He paused. He was mulling something over. Probably deciding if it might be worth lying, but then realizing that if she was asking the question, she already knew the answer. "The elf kid. Zathrian's son. He got me with a hatchet."
"Why'd he do that?"
"I didn't rape the girl, if that's what you're asking," he said, then let loose a long sigh, "But I sat there and let it happen. Told her to shut the fuck up when she was screaming. I suppose there's no use in telling you that it's haunted me for centuries."
Ten shut her eyes and rubbed her temples, trying to keep her pulse under control. "And what did you do after that?"
"I killed the boy. Like I said, I left everything to join the auxiliary, and a one-eyed man can't be a soldier. It was rash and it was cruel," he said, "And when I say I have been punished for it…"
"Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind," Ten said, her voice choked and hurried, not opening her eyes. She stayed like that, listening to the footsteps go away from her. She opened her eyes only when she felt a tug on her belt, quickly followed by a whirring in the air and finally a wet, splitting crunch. She was confused for a moment, put her hand to her belt, where Bannkiller was missing, then saw the crumpled body of Willem Coltswain on the stairs, blood and brain matter oozing down the steps, and realized what had happened. She looked around, but all of her companions seemed as shocked as she was.
All except Alistair, who was walking up to the body. He put one foot on Coltswain's back and pulled the ax from what was left of his head. He wiped the blade on a moss-covered rock. Dried it on one trouser leg. He walked back to Ten and handed it to her. "I'm sorry," he said shortly, to nobody in particular, "It needed to be done."
She took her ax hesitantly and hooked it back on her belt.
"So…" Oghren said, breaking the thick silence that had descended, "Who wants to get out of this tomb and go get shitcanned?"
The groups relaxed into a chorus of 'first sane thing I've heard all day'/ 'Maker's breath that is a good plan'/'not enough whiskey in the world' and slowly made their way back into the sunlight.