Her first thought, which she has enough tact not to speak aloud, is as many as didn't die at the hands of some templar, I expect. That thought Ness keeps to herself while she mulls over her real response.

"I hope fewer of them than the Inquisition would like," is where she ends up. "This war is a necessity, but I'd prefer to imagine these mages didn't go straight from a cage to a fight."

It's nice to imagine that some apprentices made it to a quiet life of freedom, even if depressingly unlikely. She doesn't linger on it though, tracing a finger over the cracked wood of an old bed post, ruminative.

"There is much here that reminds me of my previous life," she says. "I did not stay in them, my father had a private room which we shared, but some other Avowed had communal barracks. I cleaned them, from time to time, when it needed doing and everyone else was busy."

She looks around, and tries to imagine it: these rooms, so like the ones in Candlekeep, full of people, halls echoing with chatter and chanting, the shuffling of robes and the smell of old books. She imagines eager faces, the prickling feeling of magic all through the air, the giggles of young apprentices learning what they can do for the first time.

Now she imagines that none of them can ever, ever leave.

"Do you miss it?" Ness asks, turning to Julius with no trace of judgment.