For all of the light that I snuffed out [OPEN]

[apostafuckyou]

WHO: Raylan Gibbs and idk some dude (you, it's you)
WHAT: catch-all and open stuff
WHEN: The rest of Kingsway, a bit of Harvestmere
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Will probably contain discussions of this plot

drop of rum on my tongue; tavern
For a few days after returning from Fromage, Raylan could be found in the Herald's Rest in the evenings, instead of the dungeon. He knew he ought to get back to work, he knew he ought to get his shit together, but every time he sat down with a book, he just saw that small body again. It didn't help that he wasn't sleeping much.

So he climbed the stairs and found a table tucked into a corner where he wouldn't be spotted or bothered by most, a glass and cheap bottle on the table in front of him. It was quieter than the downstairs too, letting him drink in peace.

the blood on my hands scares me to death; night
When he did resume the research, Raylan was finding that he was hitting a wall: the veil was not well-studied, and he was coming to the point where he'd read everything on it that was available to him. So he took to taking walks at night, to clear his head. It was interesting to see Skyhold mostly quiet and still, although there was always some activity. By the time the last people were staggering to bed from the Herald's Rest, the bakers were already up and the kitchen was bustling. Raylan could be found on the ramparts, bundled against the cold, or wandering the courtyard. He even did some whittling if the mood struck him.

i'll be a better man today; teaching
Raylan had expected to want to avoid children for awhile, but his students turned out to be a comfort. That poor boy had suffered, but here were ten more like him, as bubbly and rambunctious as ever. One bright day he had them in the garden, studying the various healing herbs and writing short little reports on them. One by one or in twos and threes, they would run up to him, hand him a piece of parchment, and then he'd dismiss them to run off to whatever they did when not in lessons. Raylan was frankly a little grateful that he only had to worry about them for a few hours every day.

Comments

[apostafuckyou]

"It beats them havin' to fend for themselves in the world, and ending up killed or possessed," Raylan said, giving her a pointed glance. There were a lot of reasons not to let mage children run around untrained, and the Inquisition, as a peacekeeping force, had a vested interest in that.

"Today wasn't so advanced as all that," Raylan said, picking up another piece of parchment. "Today, I teach 'em about plants that can heal. What they do with that learning in the future will be up to them." Presumably, someone else later would teach them the alchemy shit, but that had never really been Raylan's thing.

[sistertohermen]

Surfacers and their magic are weird, okay? What with their religious hangups and ability to throw ice and potential for possession and other shit.

"Do you teach them just about plants, or are you just a general mage...teacher?" She turns a little more towards him and, elbows on knees, props her chin in her hands. "Do the other adult mages get a turn to put some knowledge in their heads?"

[apostafuckyou]

"The others get their turn, aye. There's a few of us," he explained. "I mostly work on basic skills. The chantry does what they can, but a lot of kids from poor families are barely able to read when they get here, so I catch 'em up on that. Once that's done we start on other basics, like how to cast a spell without blowin' shit up." Controlling one's magic is not intuitive for many mages, but there are basic techniques that children can learn to help.

[sistertohermen]

Thoughtful thinky face is thoughtful and thinky. "So...when mages get sent to circles, which are basically towers that are a living space and school together," she starts carefully, "they get taught things like reading and writing, as well as how to control their magic?" It's all very new to her, even in the midst of mage vs templar things.

[apostafuckyou]

It occurred to Raylan suddenly that, as a dwarf, Rachette had no reason to know anything about magic or Circles. "Aye, that's the first things they teach you if you're not already good at them. I was all right at both, and already older than most new arrivals, so I got to skip that and go straight to preparing for my Harrowing. I was nineteen when I went to the Circle, most go somewhere between six and twelve."

[sistertohermen]

Magic be weird yo. A harrowing--Harrowing, proper name--she's gathered is kind of like a test all mages are supposed to go through to make sure they don't...get infested with demons in them? Or something. Something that says 'okay we trust you with your innate abilities you've been learning since childhood even though you're still gonna live in a tower the rest of your life'. Or something. (Andrastians also be weird.)

"Why were you already a man by the time you went?"

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan shrugged. "I was never uncontrolled, the way some mages are. Some mages can hardly lift a finger without throwing lightning in someone's face, but I only had it happen once or twice, and mostly it was stuff that could be written off as a fluke. Finally my aunt decided it was too much of a risk and called in the templars. We didn't have any in the town, no one was lookin' for mages in a place like that." Raylan had grown up in a shitty little farm town, poverty-stricken and hardly worth a damn.

[sistertohermen]

"So a mage only goes to a circle to get trained if they can't control their powers, so a lot of kids can't, so they get sent young, but some people can, and it's just paranoia about abominations that make older people go?" #mageworldproblems

[apostafuckyou]

"Well, it's not just paranoia," Raylan said. "Even the most controlled of us ain't ever really safe. It's more like this:" he said, setting aside the papers in his hands so he could gesture as he talked. "Mages get sent to circles as kids to have their magic contained, both in the form of teaching them and of keeping them in one place. Once a mage has proven they're not deliberately ignorant or incapable of control, by passing their Harrowing, they're a lot more trusted and can't be made Tranquil. But any mage has the possibility of becoming possessed or turning to blood magic at any time, which is why supervision is still important."

[sistertohermen]

"But you could've just kept on living at home without going to a circle if your family didn't get antsy about your abilities and maybe possible possession," she muses. "Did you have to learn about your magic there, or at home? Did it just come naturally to you? And Tranquil, that's...oh! Those weird people who speak in monotone, they're called Tranquil. They're mages?" She'll keep asking All The Questions if you let her, Raylan.

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan didn't mind questions. He'd rather people hear from him, a somewhat reliable source, than get it from rumors and conjecture. "They're mages, yeah. They've had their connection to the Fade severed. I know that's no big deal to you, but humans and elves aren't built that way, so it takes their emotions and dreams with it. But, it takes their magic and means demons can't get to them. Sometimes that's an acceptable trade-off.

"I could have stayed at home, sure, but everyone around me would have been at risk. An abomination can take out an entire village in minutes, if it's strong and motivated enough. An apostate is risking the lives of everyone around them. I figured out a little about my magic on my own, but there was no one to teach me where I came from, my parents weren't mages. A circle was my only hope for learning, as it is for a lot of mages."

[sistertohermen]

Yeah, that seems fair enough, provided someone going into it understood what was happening and agreed to it or something. Dreams, whatever, dreams she's only had a bare brush of, it was weird, but emotions are kind of important. Would it be weird to live without them, or would weirdness not even register?

"Your parents weren't mages, so does being mage-y just pop up at random, or did it skip your parents?"

[apostafuckyou]

"No one's really sure how it works, but it did seem to have popped up randomly in me," Raylan said. "Mages are more likely to have mage kids than not, but lots of mage kids come from people with no magic in the family. Actually, circle mages don't have children, so most mages come from parents who aren't mages, but have had mages elsewhere in the family."

[sistertohermen]

"They don't have kids? Is it because people don't really like mages and don't want to risk having more of them, or is there a greater risk to it?" She guesses those might be okay reasons, but still. "Wait, if there technically aren't circles now, then circle mages could have kids if they wanted, right?"

[apostafuckyou]

"It's...well, attachment makes you more vulnerable to demons. Parent and child is the strongest attachment there is. People will resist temptation for themselves, but give in in a heartbeat if it's for their children."

That hadn't actually occurred to Raylan before. "That's...well, the risks are still the same. But I suppose we could." He looked a little perplexed -- himself with children. He'd never thought about that before.

"I'm probably too old for that now," he said, playing it off with a squinty-eyed smile so he didn't have to think about it.

[sistertohermen]

Her face continues to be squintily thoughtful and thinky! Get used to this face from smol illiterate dwarf from the underground. "You don't look that old." But what does she know about human ages? "You probably could, if you wanted to. You seem like you're wary enough of demons that if one popped up and, I don't know, threatened someone you loved, you'd probably just burn it to a crisp instead of letting it take over. You're smarter than that."

[apostafuckyou]

"You'd think," Raylan agreed. "But you can't know until you're in that situation, until it's happening." He shook his head, looking down. "Others can do what they like, I suppose, but I ain't gonna open up that possibility."