OPEN: Kirkwail

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.

The storm sweeps in like an assassin: unexpected, in the dark, and throwing sharp pricks of sleet at exposed eyes and noses with expert aim and enough force to almost draw blood if the angle is right. Half an hour after the clouds crest the cliffs is all it takes for the city to retract indoors and huddle around fireplaces, settling in for a long night that will, unforeseen, turn into a long two days.

The Gallows, too, is pelted with ice; the walls of the cliffs and the fortress protect much of it from the worst of the wind, but when it can find a path over or through the walls, it slams through windows or doors to scatter papers and snuff out fires.

In the dark, in the rain, hurrying between towers or already accustomed to jumping firelight casting strange shadows and the wind howling like a wounded animal, people might be forgiven if they don't notice at first. But there's a hanging in the courtyard, a dozen translucent wisps of bodies dangling from the idea of nooses, and there's a girl's voice in the basement of the templar tower screaming for her mother, and there's a ghostly man in the library holding the blade of a knife to his palm and whispering this is it, this is it—or maybe there isn't, actually, when you lift your head to pay closer attention.

But as the night wears on they multiply, and they brighten, and even if you haven't noticed them, they begin to notice you.

Comments

[nadasharillen]

Nari listens. Nods. Smiles, for the quiet patient way the man had gotten through Anders' stubborn rebelliousness. A good teacher, then. Her lips thin to hear about the rules against fraternization, the enforced isolation of it. Further enforced isolation. After all, they were already shut away.

She won't ask what happened again, but she watches him—both of them—with a level patient look that suggests she'll hear whatever it is Anders has to say.

[justice_is_blond]

She's listening. She's hearing about Karl and listening and it's a gift. Few others here have met Karl, he's the only one that knew him, and it means that Karl's almost gone from this world. But while some know a little about him, he's still here. A little.

"They found us out," he says after a few moments pass. "I don't know how. It doesn't really matter anymore. But one day I woke to find extra guards assigned to watching me as they took him from Kinloch Hold and brought him here. The extra guards didn't help. I escaped, and escaped, and escaped, until it stuck. When the Wardens betrayed me, I knew where I was going. I knew what I was going to do. We'd share freedom together. Always on the run, but it would be worth it with him."

Another pause. The figure stops leafing through one book, leaving it open as he grabs a second from the table as if to compare something. Anders wonders briefly if the demon is echoing the actions of the real Karl when he was back here in Kinloch, or if it's simply building off of his imagination. That too doesn't really matter. He exhales, sagging a little in his chair.

"The Templars found our correspondence. There was resentment that I'd escaped, anger, so they broke even Chantry law and made him Tranquil as bait for a trap." There's some anger in his voice, but by far the emotion there is grief. "I walked in, with Hawke, and Varric, and the rest, we fought off the Templars, and thanks to Justice's presence Karl was himself for a few moments. Long enough to tell me what happened. Long enough to... to ask me to kill him, because he could feel Tranquility returning and he couldn't live like that. With every color and emotion sucked out of the world."

A beat, and Anders straightens, eyes returning to Karl. "I did. I happened. They killed him first, but I killed him second, because I couldn't let him suffer."

[nadasharillen]

"They made him Tranquil? To— for a trap?"

Nari slaps a hand over her mouth to cover the ring of her horrified yelp, the tilt of her eyebrows and look in her eyes half horror and half chagrin at having been so loud.

She'd not known anything of the practice before coming to the Inquisition. But she'd gathered, and then with the talks about Casimir coming over the crystal while she worked she'd gathered more, and the idea of such a thing done for main spite, as a lure is...

They'd done it, after Dahlasanor had been run into the forest. They'd done it with shem'len; trapped one to lure the rest of his party into ambush. Had laughed. Didn't care, because they weren't real. Weren't people. The Templars did it with mages. The humans did it with elves. And no-one thinks anything of their casual cruelty.

"...I'm sorry."

It's unclear whether she's apologizing for her outburst, or for Karl's fate, or the part Anders had to play in it, or for all of it and more besides.

[justice_is_blond]

He curls in on himself a little at the apology. Sorry. It's all she can offer, all anyone could really offer, and it's not enough. Nothing can ever fix what was done to Karl. All he can really hope for is that it's never something that another mage faces ever again. That the Circles are absolutely destroyed and dismantled for good, torn down, and freedom remains.

"The Circles have to end," he finally says. "Until they're gone, that sort of story will keep happening. He's not the only one, he's never been the only one. The abused are so many, but people like to pretend it's just that one troublemaker over there, or that one dangerous one over here. That's never been even close to the whole of the truth."

There's pain and passion in his voice. "The Circles must stay broken. I can't let them form again. I can't forget Karl, or all of the others who have been hurt or killed or worse who can't speak up about it. People are tired of war and fighting, I'm tired of war and fighting, but Corypheus' end won't end suffering. Which you know just as well as I." She's Dalish. They still have a war to win against the Chantry.

"I think sometimes that there will never be rest for some of us."