Canticle of Mercy

sentence starters/drabbles | selectively accepting

Watching the tower being built over the remains of a previous, more ancient one, and knowing that it was meant to house books and supplies for the commodity of the mages who should inhabit filled Thrask with tired irony. He didn’t truly think the group of rebels would have accepted to follow an organisation that was built on the shoulders of the Chantry, despite having been labelled heretical more than once, when it had made its first appearance. He didn’t think they would accept to live in anything resembling a tower ever again.

Was it hope or pragmatism that made them do it?

True enough, there were few Templars around Skyhold. There was him, there were a couple who’d been with the Inquisition from the very beginning, but the bulk of the Order had gone. Thrask wasn’t sure whether to even count Cullen as one anymore.

He crossed his arms on his chest, where the blade of mercy was embroidered over the red padded doublet that would usually go under his uniform’s breastplate. 

The Inquisitor was a curious woman. Not how he would have expected an Inquisitor, or an Herald of Andraste, to look like — perhaps he imagined a taller woman, a human woman with blond and flowing hair, an Andraste come to life from inside the gold of her statues. Perhaps it was better that she wasn’t like that (he might have looked and seen Meredith instead), and perhaps it was good that she was an elf, after all.

« My hope, your Worship, was seeing the factions collaborate as they were meant to, for once. Not… being forced to choose between them. But I fear that hope really died with Justinia at the Conclave. » He pursed his lips. « I’ve heard that there is Red Templar activity in the Emprise du Lion. Is that where they fled to? »

Thrask spat saliva and grains of sand on the ground. Tasteless, it ground between its teeth and on his gums with its scraping texture, it mixed with the bile that had filled his mouth from his stomach.

When he looked up, his sight yet swayed for the spell that Grace had begun to cast upon him. It had been only a couple of seconds, only a moment, falling down on his knees with his gauntlets half buried in the wet sand; he knew because, had it been longer, he would be dead.

But a couple of seconds of boiling blood had burnt him from the inside out, turned his guts over, were making his limbs quiver inside his armour, despite all the protections that the protective enchantments offered him like a balm. Another Templar was holding him up, a hand firmly placed under his armpit, Grace lay next to a rock, her legs and arms twisted in that peculiar way that is common of corpses.

He looked up, breathless and wordless, and met Hawke’s gaze.

Having strived to protect these mages, only to be betrayed by one of them the moment he refused to let her resort to violence against their hostage? Having agreed to take extreme measures, thus kidnapping the elf, in the face of an apparent threat that could have frustrated the efforts of years? Having let urgency and fear and need dictate his course of action, ending up with this as a result?

Those could already be called regrets.

And the fight that followed, the other Templars that he glimpsed as they approached down the the dusty paths between the cliffs — they had failed, regardless.

And older things, past things. All regrets.

Right then and there, it almost didn’t matter what Hawke really meant with her anger-filled words. It didn’t matter if his eyes were overwhelmed by the rawness of his rue, when he so rarely forsook patience to betray such strength of emotion.

He breathed out, « Yes. Yes, I will. »

Then whoever was holding him up cleansed the area around from residual magic. Someone rose their shield. He was dragged away.