"I just might once I stop coughing up my lungs, I sound like an old man. Worse. Even my grandfather sounds healthier and he's bloody old." After all, he came back because he's here to help, because he went to get some perspective but well, he didn't make any promises to anyone about how well he'd behave himself and he saw some men about some goats. Best not to mention that yet when Korrin really does know exactly what Asher hurling goats at anywhere will mean, let people think Asher just feels like having a few goats to get good and fat for eating now the Boneflayers have all joined him to set up camp in the valley.

"Our shamans and augurs have been doing that longer than the Chantry," he says with as much of a shrug as he can manage, which isn't much of a shrug. "Of course they won't really care but it's possible, all young mages are possessed for part of their lives in the hold, then they end it. If they don't then they're exiled, or if they can't they can be looked after, depends on the circumstances but part of why I left...what he did was corruption. I believe in my gods. I know they're with me but spirits are our gods, and what he did with one is corrupting one. He deserves to die for that."

"Wish you'd seen the augur's face," Melisende adds when Asher's darkens, when he can't speak for the tightness in his throat, her grin sharp as a knife. "Looked like Korth himself and cold as Hakkon too as Asher likes to say. For a big man, he went so quiet, a shame he couldn't come here to do what needs to be done."