for Myrobalan

[misdirection_hex]

Loyalist traitors will burn with the Chantry!

Stand for freedom--or fall with the slavers.

The choice is yours.

The flyers line the second-floor corridor, pasted on the door of every double room. The apprentices and enchanters have been spared the propaganda. Vandelin deduces that the culprit isn't allowed up onto the enchanters' floor of the tower, and wouldn't be familiar enough with it to pick out the Loyalists' doors in any case--but he or she knows that the mages are ripe for recruitment. He suspects 'she,' and can hazard more than an educated guess about her name.

He'll be expected to discipline her; she's his apprentice, after all, and he'll be blamed for this little stunt--but he's tempted to leave the flyers as they are, just for a little longer. It's only when he notices that one's already been taken down that he reconsiders. And it's only when he realizes that the door belongs to his cousin that he feels a tiny pang of remorse.

Quietly, he knocks.

Comments

[misdirection_hex]

Vandelin knows rhetoric when he hears it. He has to admire all those subtle little jabs, dog whistles enough to put a Fereldan to shame. So much for the grand freedom fighters, trooping off like mindless little toys to crush the Andrastians like they once ground our people beneath their holy boots; here comes the new boss, same as the old; your cause is no less a religion than our prayer.

He gazes down at the intricate folds of paper in Myrobalan's hands, watching the holy symbol take shape from the fiery declaration of antitheism, and lets out a little huff of laughter. Not so subtle after all, perhaps.

"You think I'd resort to flyers on doors?" he says, with a faint note of genuine amusement--it could have been a joke between them, in happier times. You know me well. He considers it--has considered it, but makes a show of it now, as if willing to engage on Myr's terms.

"The atrocities of the templars in places like Kirkwall and Tantervale would speak for themselves if only we all had a way to hear them. But we don't, do we? When the only news we're ever permitted is what we get from those with the freedom to leave the tower, well." He spreads his hands wide. "You can't give a regime enough rope to hang itself if they're allowed to hide the rope. We need to drag everything into the daylight. There's only so much we enchanters can do at once when they deign to let us out."

[faithlikeaseed]

"Truly, no," Myr admits, finishing the Maker's band with a final twist and tucking the ends together to form it into a single unbroken curve. He considers for a moment offering it to Vandelin, then discards that idea; too likely, his cousin would take it as a declaration of open war between them, however Myr means it. Instead, he sets it down behind him on his desk, giving it a little push toward a haphazard stack of its fellows in various sizes. He's had a lot of cause to make them, these days. "You prefer evidence to slogans."

Which see. Myr folds his arms across his chest, a defensive huddle all unintended, and listens to what his cousin has to say without interrupting--though he flinches around the eyes at the mention of Kirkwall. (How long had he spent on his knees begging that the rot exposed there did not reach to the Chantry's heart? That retaliation for the abomination unleashed there would not rest so heavy on the innocent? At least there'd been a prayer answered when outside forces had foiled the Annulment.)

Quietly, then--because it's the only way he can hope to keep his voice even--he says, "But we've heard of Kirkwall and Tantervale here. It isn't--" ...He can't do this. He had thought, in that one moment of calm he'd been gifted, that he had reserves sufficient to meet this challenge with the equanimity and compassion it required. But the fragile clarity he had is slipping away by the second and he feels trapped here in what should be his sanctum and Maker love him all Van will do is make this worse--

Breathe in, breathe out. Myr presses one fisted hand to his lips, eyes briefly closed as he packs away the doubt, the worry, the pain. Then he resumes, evenly as you please, "--a matter of information now, is it, as what we do with what we've been told. You don't need to persuade me that there are wicked men and women among the templars, that they need to be dealt with.

"Persuade me that destroying the Chantry root to crown is the only way to get rid of them."

It's not any different in its way than his combat training, pushing past the limits of his own endurance. But it hurts, and there's no swordmaster around to tell him whether or not it's the sort of pain that's to be expected with growth, or the kind that cripples and kills.