He doesn't trust those stairs worth a damn, either, so when he thinks the first floor's gotten about as picked through with whatever left as they can manage he makes a motion to move on. Next door, really, if it doesn't look awful. Hit up a row of living spaces, former homes, dig through the rotted remnants of former lives.

As Strange asks, on the outskirts, poking with a stick, at the rotted remnants of his former life.

"Feel like I fit in with the misfits and outcasts," he says, a little blithely. Not that it isn't true. "And the books needed better tending to."

Strange doesn't say it like a curse. Jude hadn't, either. Ellie had been more directly hurt by it. The Rifters have an interesting relationship with everything to do with mages, here. There's the assumption that they're going to be treated the same. The Chantry might, even if they shouldn't.

Still. He sighs it out, a little quiet: "Former Templar." It doesn't matter to most. And given he still has retained the abilities (and addictions) of the job, maybe it's reasonable to not make the distinction. But it matters to him. "Who just wants to make the world a better, saner place before a madman destroys it all."