#piouspride

In the Forests of the Night starters

His eyes were the blue at the heart of a candle, where theflame burned hottest.

His voice held an edge such as she had seldom heard in itbefore. It sometimes seemed as though Sebastian never got angry; she knew it wasn’tentirely true. Ironically, perhaps, it was his own sense of justice outragedwhich was most likely to bring him to anger, just as it was Anders’ also. Thetwo actually had quite a lot in common, if only their views could in any wayoverlap or align. Not that she’d ever say such a thing to either of them, ofcourse.

She bent and wiped her daggers clean on Varnell’s stainedsurcoat, taking a perverse sort of pleasure in sullying the sunburst crest.Other bodies lay around them, those of humans primarily – but the great grey hulksof the Qunari, slaughtered by Varnell and his followers like they were no morethan the beasts such zealots named them, were slumped against the wall in awelter of their own blood.

She rose, still without answering Sebastian, and steppedcloser to those bodies, forcing herself to take in the details of their deaths.The slit throats, the staring eyes; there were pale scratches on the stonyfloors where Qunari claws had dug in and scraped in their death throes.

Hawke and her companions had killed every one of the men andwomen in this room because of this. Because of this wanton slaughter. Were theyany different, in the end, to those who’d wrought the deaths of the capturedQunari?

She had to believe that they were.

Turning back to Sebastian at last, she stood among thebodies of the slain, both those who’d fallen to her blade and those whosedeaths she’d sought in some small way to redress.

          The clink of his armour echoed more than his steps in the nearly           empty Chantry. He used to think that the disturbance that it brought           to those who sought prayer and silence was for more careless men           than he. And while that feeling hadn’t changed, he had become keenly           aware of the fact that his steps, the sound of metal grinding against           metal, caused unrest in so many more places, so many more occasions.           The glances of a few faithful who looked up and then returned to their           supplications were trivial in comparison.

          He sought a side chapel rather than sit in the central nave, where           privacy could be added to the comfort of the resouding music. He did           not find it empty. The broken promise of solitude made him halt on the           spot, one step already into the chamber, but his gauntlet raised, as if he had           the authority to close the door and leave the chapel only to the young           man who had desired its discretion first.

          « I didn’t mean to interrupt. » His hand lingered mid-air. Much like           hearing one word of the Chant, and then the next, and then a whole           verse, could tell the learned man which Canticle was being recited,           each detail of the man’s features smoothly added to his distinctive           profile --- and at once Thrask remembered his name.