The inside of a Chantry was not nearly as impressive as it appeared to be from the street.
Granted, the smells were unusual and rampant without being overpowering - incense and the mustiness of books, the tangy taste of hot metal and piousness that wrapped around the Templars like cloaks, and most of all the scent of faith - faint but enduring, like the sense of being in an empty room when another person has newly left it. Garrett himself had little to do with the Andrastian faith; after having been raised under the aegis of the Lady and her love, he could see why a section of the true-men would worship a girl in her knickers, but the Lady had been real. He remembered her kindness, the touch of her hand. What did the worshippers of the Maker have? The Chant, and some lovely stained glass, and a life of worship spent adhering to rules set down several Ages ago.
Empty. Quiet. Boring.
Even when his people had been quietly trying to hide their origins as the bearers of the werewolf curse, they stayed well away from the Chantry - not because Chanters and Templars had any better eyes or minds than the normal folk, but because they were more prone to sudden accusations of apostacy and demonic possession than others. Down that path lie madness, and hayfields and windmills on fire, and general unpleasantness that Swiftrunner's pack had wanted to avoid. Thus it was that Garrett Edgewalker was likely one of, if not the first of the Lady's people to set foot inside a chantry, and he had been expecting something.... more.
Walking along at Bethen's hip, the wolf's eyes searching, tail swishing slowly back and forth and his ears up and attentive, he had been waiting for something to happen. For some wall of faith to crash over him like a tidal wave, for a shock of lightning in his bones, for the priests and priestesses of the Maker and His religion to leap up from where they knelt in prayer and either denounce him as a heathen or attempt to convert him to the Light. When none of these things happened, the shapeshifter was rather nonplussed. Was this place of worship truly just a building, after all, and nothing more? Was this not supposed to be a house of the Maker, where He and His servants dwelt in the Light and spread their message across the land?
Slowly, he became aware of the undercurrent of the smell of fear, beneath the books and incense; from Bethen first, then the Templars, Alderic included. He thought perhaps that it was he who caused it - he was a fearsome creature, even padding tamely along at the side of what was a rather small true-man female, after all - but no, this had an older, more deeply rooted odor, as if it had dwelt in the walls of the chantry for more than a generation.
His yellow eyes skated sideways and up, taking in Bethen's anxiety-blanched face, and wondered if it was her they were afraid of.