Father had kept a set of dominoes. Small wooden rectangles, mismatched and simply carved.
He would play games with them. Sometimes with Mother, sitting near the fireplace, eye to eye and hands idly touching when they weren't needed to place tiles. Sometimes with friends, when we were in a place long enough to make them. The adults would gather at the local tavern or town hall, money changing hands amidst laughter and ale as the dominoes clinked on the table.
My siblings and I gave the hobby little thought. Grown up games and grown up concerns, too reliant on probability and pips to hold our interest.
But then, there was the day he took those dominoes and made magic. Not normal "keep it hidden, keep it quiet" magic, but the eyes-wide-in-wonder sort of magic that lay at the behest of good fathers everywhere. He carefully, painstakingly, showed us how the dominoes could be made to stand on end, side by side, in twisting twirling designs. How they would cascade into each other with a single feather touch, setting off a chain reaction that would run its course to their breathless delight.
It was all the more special, knowing how much time and precision was needed to set off the reaction. How the placement of each piece had to be just so for the entire set to fall in order.
Carver, particularly, delighted in this game. It was something special, a magic he could learn too. He and Father spent hours inventing elaborate mazes, delighting in finding unexpected ways for them to fall. Tricks of spacing and angles made the scattering seem to double back upon its self. Portions of the set that seemed destined to fall were skipped entirely, or passed over only to fall at a later point from an unexpected collision.
It was an art. Learning how to position a single tile to make several divergent lines topple at the same time.
Once he deemed his tutelage sufficient, Carver took a day and spent hours setting up a design alone. He ignored his chores and my and Bethany's increasingly unfriendly reminders that the woodpile was not going to restock its self. His focus was wholly on his carefully constructed patterns. He wanted it to be a surprise for Father, a demonstration of how much he had learned.
Bratty words were exchanged. A gift, in my family. Finally, fed up and full of my self appointed responsibilities to show Little Brother the many errors of his ways, I flicked one of his dominos in retaliation and watched the entire enterprise scatter.
Hours of work unraveled. Carver's tantrum would have led one to believe a lifetime's undertaking had been destroyed by my carelessness, my pique, my gross lack of empathy.
Father arrived home to the toppled miniature empire of could-have-beens. Carver cried at the injustice. I calmly laid out my carefully structured defense.
Father shook his head, placing a hand on Carver's shoulder, quieting his sobs with a gentle hug.
"There is a lesson here" he said, soft and stern. "No matter how much work we put into something, it might all fall apart at the end." And then he looked at me, the I-expect-better-of-you look. "And whoever makes the mess gets to clean it up."
I was a child. All righteous indignation as I gathered the tiles, put them in their tidy wooden boxes, found myself tending to Carver's chores after all.
That moment comes back to me now. Cries of injustice and the tumble of dominoes. I think I understand. I would like nothing more than to scream at the world and wait for Father to send my tormenters on their way.
The air is smoke and ash. Burnt lyrium and silence. I missed the rush of watching it unfold, following the cascade as one piece hit another to make this mess, but there is no denying the aftermath.
I could name some of the pieces: a blight and a witch, an idol, an Arishok. Mages and templars and the touched denizens of the city, circling around me in their convoluted patterns. Who hit what and why it ultimately chose now to fall is beyond the scope of my sight. A single domino, however pivotal to the design, does not understand the forces arrayed around it.
It only takes a moment, the lightest feather touch.
They are coming. The surviving templars. This unnatural stillness will pass and decisions will need to be made.
Whoever makes the mess gets to clean it up.
I do not even know where to begin.