The Viscount's Keep was its usual bustle of complaining nobles who were speaking to jaded guards, so used to their dramas they had prefilled scripts of responses in their heads.

  As soon as Hawke entered through the keep's large double-door entrance, he was besieged by his neighbor.

  "Lord Hawke, please I need your help." A porky middle-aged man, laden with gold rings on his fingers and dressed in fine gold silks, waddled with haste toward Hawke.

  Fenris groaned and rolled his eyes at the dumpy noble and power-walked ahead for the guard's post.

  "Thanks Honey." Hawke groaned as he rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming along.

  "Lord Meloris, to what do I owe the pleasure."

  "Finally, someone willing to listen to me." Meloris huffed as he waved off the guard he had pestered earlier.

  Hawke gave the guard an okay gesture.

  "Sorry Hawke, I'll... er, let you deal with him." The guard apologized and went on his way with great relief.

  "It's my caravans. My merchants were supposed to bring back my er, goods, from Sundermount, but they haven't sent word." Meloris's fat fingers twirled as a cunning thought stirred in his head. "Perhaps you could find out what has happened to them? I'll compensate of course."

  Hawke frowned. Sundermount. It was unusual for a merchant caravan to travel through that region. He suspected the porky lord's caravan was another friendly definition for smuggling.

  "Right, caravan." He stepped close to Meloris as he whispered, "What were you smuggling?"

  "Smuggling!" Meloris gasped and wiped sweat from his brow with a fine handkerchief. "I was merely assisting and procuring goods rare to the region." He nervously stammered.

  Hawke sighed and stepped away. "If you're not going to come clean, I'll just get another guard and..."

  "Wait. Okay, so I might have been procuring certain minerals."

  "Oh?" Hawke returned to the conversation, demanding the man come clean with what he wanted and what the goods were. His heart sank when he realized it was nothing good. Leliana was right, they were there.

  "Lord Meloris, for your own survival, cut your losses this time and give me that smuggling route. Otherwise, you might find yourself strung up at a butcher's."

  The way Hawke delivered his warning made the lord tremble with fear, not about to disbelieve the Champion of Kirkwall's advice. Especially when environments were known to sometimes explode behind him.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Okay and thank you."

  Hawke received the mapped route and went to the lower-ground Guard Post and Guard-Captain Aveline's office.

  "I can't believe Varric. He runs off to play with the elves at Wycome and dumps me with this shit!" Aveline's cursing could be heard from the closed office door.

  A lot of the passing guards sighed and went about their business, long accustomed to their boss's ranting outbursts regarding their Viscount. Despite it all, the guards were loyal to Varric and Aveline, for they saved the city during the Mage Rebellion uprising and had since restored much of what the towns had lost at that time. So Aveline was more than in her right to curse aloud now and then.

  "It wasn't intended Aveline. He's trying to save a city from an unjust decimation. If Wycome falls, the enemy has a foothold on trade routes into Kirkwall." Fenris calmed the woman's ranting with his voice of reason.

  Hawke entered to see his old Ferelden friend dumping herself down in her office chair. He glanced at the woman who inadvertently became one of Varric's character inspirations for his popular novel Hard in Hightown. She was a formidable beauty with fierce red hair held back from her forehead with a braided band of red. Her green eyes were stark and always seemed ready to see trouble behind the calm. Her tanned Kirkwall guard uniform was well fitted to her toned and seasoned warrior body, showing the nicks and scrapes from fights over the years.

  Fenris was leaning against the backwall, watching the woman trying her best not to burst a vein.

  "Then tell me what is going on. That rogue Sera bursts through the door demanding the guard hunt for missing elven children." She rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache forming. "Of course I'm going to send the guards for that. And I was disturbed I hadn't heard about it before."

  "It's not only that." Hawke sighed and checked the area outside the office to make sure there wasn't potential eavesdropping. He dropped his voice to a whisper when he closed the door and sat at the chair before her desk to fill her in.

  "They're being taken by the venatori." His voice was low but Aveline heard him clearly.

  She sat upright and with a clear expression of mixed disbelief and shock.

  "Wait. Are you saying that the group that was led by that darkspawn god terrorizing Ferelden is here?"

  "In force." Fenris added.

  "Andraste." Aveline's voice showed signs of cracking, as the thought of Tevinter mages running rampant around Kirkwall was nightmarish.

  She and Varric had barely pulled the city back on its feet after the mage rebellion damages and Sebastian Vael's stupid little skirmish that ended up in failure for him, thanks to the Inquisition's support. The prince's men were sent back to Starkhaven licking their wounds.

  "How are they roaming our country unchecked?!"

  "They've got control of Sebastian's court and stirring him, personally, into action to decimate Wycome." Hawke added.

  "Leaving Starkhaven an open door to the Free Marches and into Kirkwall." Fenris growled as he found the whole prince and politics situation a shitty mess. It's one of the many reason he hated politics.

  "Vael again? Shit that guy's a single-minded idiot!" She cursed and eased back into her chair, closing her eyes and wishing Hawke was just reciting a chapter from one of Varric's books.

  "Sorry, Aveline, but it gets worse," Hawke soberly said.

  "Of course it does." She sat upright and prompted him to tell her what he was after. Her body near froze with shock and horror at hearing his explanation.

  "Maker, it'll be like fleeing from the Blight all over again. If demons pour through tears in the veil they control, we're all dead." Aveline rose and paced the floor space behind Hawke. "I'll get my best guards to aid you. Some of them are former templars, so they can deal with those mage bastards. Hell, I'll even come myself because this threat is too serious to ignore."

  Hawke and Fenris left Aveline to organize the guard forces for the strike at Sundermount.