faderift | closed | i know what i know

"Voss, Averesch," Mages. They're speaking of only the relevant parties — "Julius, Fabria. That Fereldan boy."

The healer, the one that's always fussing. Colin. A hand to the day's stubble (protecting his chin).

"When we returned this autumn, there were more. They'd taken up raiding." Out with it: "Flint, Barrow, a Nevarran. Matthias."

The relevant parties. And Isaac. Isaac, too,

"A dozen dead."

Edited 2020-12-08 03:25 (UTC)

Mention of Flint seems to dull the edge of Marcus's focus; Matthias renews it, a flare of anger that is considered, kept contained.

"Barrow is a Templar," he says, "and a coward, praying to the Maker that everyone forgets who he is, and whatever he's run from." Of Matthias, and whoever the Nevarran is, they don't bear mention.

At least, not here, while Isaac is sitting across from him, and Marcus asks, "Did Flint hold his sword to your throat?" It isn't wholly rhetorical. It is a question that demands an answer, teeth showing on the edges of the Commander's name.

"No."

Would it be better if he had? Certainly, this conversation would be simpler. Near as certain, there'd be a fucking brawl. It's impulse to shrug blame — it's one that need be managed. Some anger is necessary,

Some anger gets it done.

"I was a coward," Barrow ought to be dead, and Isaac thinks Flint would have borne it — might better respect the bargain. "And I cannot take a Templar alone."

Sure he could. Marcus doesn't need to know that.

"I was a coward, and the longer you spend here, the more of us you will find. They've built lives. They have people to lose. We cannot afford these choices to hinge upon the weakness of a single man, the pressure of a moment."

"Or more of us will die before this is through."

Edited (what is word) 2020-12-08 04:25 (UTC)

Marcus does read reports, everyone might be surprised to know. He writes his own, and he hands them in in good order with neat hand writing and not too many grammatical errors, and he peruses all that come publicly available. He's waded through the information generated from the work in Ghislain.

None of what Isaac is saying sounds familiar.

Which doesn't help.

He stands. His expression is like stone, but there is still an energy beneath it, chair scraped backwards with the movement of standing and then table creaking as he puts his weight on it, hands flat. "I hope you know," he says, "that your personal survival and safety lives and dies on the survival and safety of your brothers and sisters. No one mage alone will last long in whatever world is made at the end of this."

But just as quickly, that intensity lifts—and redirects. "This wasn't reported. Did Flint demand your discretion."

"It wasn't reported where you could read it," Isaac corrects, ungentle. "I wager the others know. Rutyer, Yseult."

Cannot say what he expects them to know of Nevarra. If Flint held that secret, it wasn't for the sake of Circle mages.

"We blamed the attacks on Venatori. Had this gone public, there would have been reprisals." He stands, belated, hands tucked behind his back. "They'd killed children, Marcus."

Okay, teens.

"And so that is how mages die for their crimes," Marcus says, immediately, "like Corypheus's dogs, in some Orlesian battlefield."

He takes his weight off the table as Isaac stands. Unhappy, visibly, but less so directly at Isaac. "If they think they can live under the banner of the Venatori," he says, collecting his thoughts, "then that says far more as to the Chantry, and the Inquisition, and Riftwatch, than it does for them. Because they're not the only ones."

And they won't be the last. He'd seen the madness his brethren, as he calls them, were driven to in the Hinterlands in those last days of war. They'd known the deal that was on the table in front of Grand Enchanter Fiona that day.

"You want agreement, you said. Where do you suppose that comes from?"

"Within. There are few of us here, and more alike than we are not. That group of yours —"

The training.

"— Those mages who spar with you know what doing so implies," He doesn't expect Lukas to agree, but everyone needs an enemy. Perhaps Marcus more than most. "The Rifters are a secondary concern. They are not us, and there's little to be gained by arguing their semantics. Presented as a sufficiently united front, they're like to fall into sympathy."

"But secrets leak. You'll need someone for doubters to turn to. Not a mage. Someone regarded at least neutrally by our," The click of tongue in teeth. "Leadership."

Edited 2020-12-26 02:33 (UTC)

'Not a mage' encourages a subtle tic and flex of tension at Marcus's jaw. It's easy to react. He is not as reactionary as he could be, and so listens.

Coming here, he hadn't laboured under the illusion that Riftwatch could be made to sympathise wholly with the cause of mages (pretending for a moment there is only one), not when it's busy with the matter of saving the world. But it had drawn such mages anyway, and now, seeing how such things interact, the pressure applied to one in service of the other—

"As a go between?" he asks. Talking to Isaac means, sometimes, he will just have to ask a question that possibly makes him sound stupid in service of finding clarity in the Orlesian's meaning. It is a good thing Marcus doesn't mind that.

closed | i know what i know

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