It's quiet again. A whole new sort of quiet. Hawke swallows, trying to get control over her thumping heart, Bethany and Carver still staring wide-eyed. Father's the only one of them taking what he's done in anything like a stride, nonchalantly tossing another branch on the fire, but even he has to feel the tension in the air. Hawke's got to say something. She's got to say anything.

"Maker's cock!"

"Language, pup."

"… and balls!"

As if he has any business scolding her now, after what he's just…

"How did you… you just… why did…" Hawke splutters, even though she thinks she might already know why. The stakes are high, the lesson is blasphemous but this is the way Father's always taught them, just throwing an idea out, showing it plain and letting them take it as they will. Asking questions, arguing or challenging or just kicking it to see what shakes loose. He cares as much about how they get there as whatever they finally decide to believe, and if Hawke thought blood magic was off that particular table, well, well... Maker's cock.

Father waits a moment, before realizing it's too much, the shock too great and the ascent so steep even Hawke doesn't know where to look for the first foothold into this conversation, and Bethy and Carver are… well, nowhere near old enough for what's happened today, let alone this. Who knows when it might have come up, if not for everything that's happened.

"They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones," When he wants to, Father can sound as grand as if he were preaching the Feastday sermon, reciting the very verse that damns him with a certain wry amusement, "They shall find no rest in this world. Or beyond."

"Except you're not." Hawke scowls.

He tips his head, challenging. "Why not, pup?"

"Because that's stupid." Not quite up to the usual standard of the family debates, but it's not like she ever claimed to be good at this. "You're just not… evil. Just because of that? You didn't hurt anyone. You didn't do it to hurt anyone, and you're not different now or dangerous or… nothing happened!"

It's still a hell of a crack in the ground, and her gaze keeps catching there, to make sure that's all it is - but it is, of course it is, and this is her Father, same as ever. Hawke's in awe of what he can do, she always has been and she's learning new reasons by the minute, but that's a long way from fear.

"The Chantry would argue my intentions don't matter."

Hawke snorts. "The Chantry says apostates eat babies."

Carver shifts a little, curiosity finally overcoming his wariness. "Where - where did you learn to do… that?"

"In a way, I suppose I learned about it the first day I arrived at the Gallows. I imagine every mage does." Father raises an eyebrow again when no one speaks. "How do they track down a mage that's escaped from the Circle?"

Bethany makes a little sound of surprise, the perfect noise for realizing the Templars use evil magic to find and kill people who use the same kind of evil magic. It's obvious, really, except for that whole 'use the evil magic' bit.

"The phylacteries?"

Hawke's only a little bit annoyed she still can't quite pronounce the word right on the first try.

"Chantry-sanctioned blood magic." Father nods. "For the good of the world. One of those secrets people don't know about because they'd rather not know. I've heard rumors Gray Wardens use blood magic as well, though I imagine most people would rather not know about them at all."

Secrets and magic are a bad combination - how many times has he told them that? Ignorance doesn't help the Templars or the people they're trying to protect - sure, Hawke felt a lot safer before she'd seen that Arcane Horror, but it wasn't all that bad now that she knew how to kill it. The fight had been scary, but they'd all survived, hadn't they? Now Father's just shown them blood magic, real swear-to-the-Maker maleficar draw-your-swords-and-soil-yourself blood magic, and the world hadn't ended. Here they were, safe as houses, and that's worth the knowing, isn't it?

"Blood magic, in its most basic form, is the simplest exchange of life for power. It isn't something to learn, it isn't some secret - it just is. A law as fixed and natural as any other." Father glances down at his wounded hand. "Of course, you can only go so far before you'll kill yourself with your own spells. So while it might terrify the average man, it's no guarantee in a fight. Except to likely let you down the moment you need it most."

"So you use your opponent, when they get too close." Hawke says. "Or you do if you're a real blood mage."

"Real blood mage?" Father smiles. "So I am exempt from all the damnation, then?"

"You didn't call up any demons!" Carver snaps, a great deal disturbed and therefore a good deal angry about all of this, and it's put him into a sulk. "You didn't kill anybody. That's what they do, blood mages. They kill people for power."

"They bring demons over to this side, so they can control them." Hawke adds. Thins the Veil, that's the proper magicky term. Mucking about with things no one ought to touch, and do it often enough and get stupid enough and you end up with the Black City and a half-buggered world.

Father raises an eyebrow. "And how do you control a demon?"

"You don't control demons." Bethany says right away, and whatever this business with blood magic might be Hawke's sure at least that part's not going to change. Anything on this side of the world is nothing but food for that side, for the Fade, and the nightmare they fought today isn't even the worst of it. Demons can look like beautiful ladies or fine gentlemen or anyone at all, and they offer up all kinds of wonders, any promise they can think of to get into the world proper. If offers won't work, they'll go for arguments, or pleas for understanding. Tricks or threats or lies, but all of it is always - always - to only one end, and it's never, ever a bargain worth the making.

Teach a bear to talk, and it might come up with a dozen good reasons for Hawke to end up in its gullet, but she still doesn't think she'd like it there.

"The Tevinter Imperium controls demons, though, don't they?" Father says, as if thinking to himself, and clearly fishing for the argument, "The Imperium uses blood magic, and deals with demons, and they're not not overrun with Abominations. Are they more clever than we are? Are they better mages?"

"No." Carver says, entirely annoyed by the idea, and even more so that he's expected to have to explain his scorn. "It's… it's because they have slaves, isn't it? If the demons ask for payment and they're in Tevinter they can just… give them people. As many people as the demons want, whenever they need to. It doesn't matter to them how many people die, if they're slaves."

Faced with what they'd fought today, Hawke imagines a Tevinter mage would have just tossed the other Chasind right in the way, and used his life as enough distraction for the victory. Or if the damned demon had still had the sense to negotiate, the mage might have killed them all to cut a deal - why not? What could it matter to him, a handful of dead Fereldens more or less? Hawke can't really imagine it, the sheer, cruel indifference, but that's the way it was in the ancient days, even here. Half the world got dipped in gold, while the other half died for it, and even Andraste couldn't make that all right in the end.

"I would argue the difference between killing a slave and a fellow Magister is more about convenience and opportunity than respect." Father says. "It doesn't matter to them how many people die, or who, or how."

Thinking like that only ends up in the one place, that's for damn sure. It's full dark now, and much easier to imagine the impossible by firelight, the moment when the Golden City crumbled and the whole world shook.

Hawke snorts. Idiots. "What does it matter if you're a god, if there's nothing left to be a god of?"

"Would they really have… would they have done it on purpose, then?" Carver says. "The Blight? I mean, it didn't work out right - you mean would they have let that happen anyway, if it got them what they wanted?"

Father doesn't answer, but he doesn't really need to.

"… and once they all start, once somebody is like that… then everybody else has to be too, don't they? Hurting people. Being ruthless," Bethany says, following it to a conclusion she'd obviously rather not reach. "If there's any mage who isn't strong, or can't prove their strength, that they can be worse - either they… they kill or they die."

Hawke's never thought of the Tevinters much like real people before. They were always just evil because they were, just like blood magic was - but there's no reason in the world it should be that simple, or set aside from what she knows to be true. It's not much different than the banns and the teyrns, is it? Always keeping an eye on who's got what, who's better than, always pushing and shoving for what's theirs. The way even the Templars in town will get together and give any new recruit the roughest time, just because they can. What's Tevinter but all of that pushed right to the edge, a pack of mabari so fight-crazed they can't remember how to stop - I kill one person, you kill three, he kills ten - and the poor stupid bastards actually think that's the way things have to be.

One more reason to just stay out in the Wilds, not that Hawke needs more reasons.

"So that's the greatest sin of the Tevinter Imperium?" Carver says. "Being a right pillock."

Father barks out a laugh, as welcome as the fire and warmer in its own right. "Well, I won't argue with you there."

He sighs, steepling his fingers together, and Hawke can't help but lean forward a little at the expression on his face, narrowed eyes searching out the past. The look that means a story's coming.

"When I first landed in Kirkwall, I was in a bit of trouble, believe it or not." Father smirks, and of course they believe it. "As a young man of few means, I joined the Circle on purpose. I turned myself in because it was a decent meal and warm bed and some very thick walls between me and my current set of… circumstances. Rather twitchy, pirate-shaped circumstances. The Templars were my own private guard, they just didn't know it."

If she were still as young as her siblings, Hawke might take his bravado at face value, but she can't imagine it was easy as he wants them to think. Otherwise they would have heard this story long ago.

"What was it like? The Gallows?" Bethany says, wide-eyed, as curious about life in the Circle as she is afraid of it.

"Cold. A cold that seeped right into your bones most nights. High stone walls. No green to speak of, really, but you could get the most tremendous views of the sky, especially when the storms came in. Nothing smelled quite like that stone after a hard rain. I used to sit on the highest part of the wall, and watch the sun crack down on the sea, and let the wind batter me around. There was a harsh, wild sort of wonder to it, if you knew where to look."

Hawke can't begin to imagine it, stuck on some little island, all walled up. The thought of not being able to walk as far as she wants, when she wants nearly has her up and tromping around the fire, just for the sake of moving.

"What about the Templars?" Carver says.

"Just people, like always, some good and some bad. In the larger cities there's more of them, is all. More people, more politics, more worries." Father shrugs. "I kept my head down, until my problems found other things to do. I passed the Harrowing, and that makes a lot of the Templars less nervous, and like as much to leave you alone, most of the time. It was… quiet, and there were books to read and some mages doing some rather ridiculously extraordinary…" Father grins at himself. "Things you'd all find rather boring, I think. Magical theory. Spirits dancing on the heads of pins and all that. I suppose it's a lot of rubbish, really. Wonderful ideas, but what good is it all when… ah, we could have helped so many, if they'd just let us do it."

Once or twice a year, a man or woman will show up at their gate with a smile and a hearty hug and a gift for Mother, what Hawke's come to realize is a sheepish attempt to get on her good side, to allow one more apostate through the door for a night or two. Father's friends come to visit, some of them local but a few of them mages he's known before any of them were even born, apostates who've been dodging trouble for longer than Hawke's been alive. All of them use false names - safer that way - so it's Chicory and Bluebird and Luciole all sharing a bottle of wine and a long conversation. Hawke never understands half of what they say but she loves to sit at the top of the stair and let the unfamiliar words sweep over her, the careful, studied cadence of mages, the strange accents of the ones far from home, and they argue and laugh and call Father the only Loyalist apostate in Thedas.

It's not true, Father's not any such thing, but he also doesn't hate all the Templars the way most of them do, without question or hesitation. He doesn't think they'd all be better off without the Circle, and certainly doesn't like it when they say he's just making excuses for Ser Bryant, for treating the Chantry like people even though they see no real need to return the favor.

Bethany frowns. "You didn't want to leave?"

"It puts a few dents in my dashing apostate image, doesn't it?" Father laughs. "I suppose I got comfortable there. I took up with the healers, and learned all I could. If it ever came to saving someone's life, I didn't want to be the one to let them down. Eventually, I even started teaching - and that… that was good. I still thought about leaving, running away, but it would have been torture to go in the winter, and when spring came they gave me two more to teach, and it… I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. I thought then, that maybe I could work from the inside, little changes, and eventually it would be better. Give me a guard, shackle me to a Templar if they needed to - but I could convince them to let me go out and be of some use to someone, to let us all be of use instead of moldering away. It's a little different here in Ferelden - they'll let you out, sometimes, but still… it's not enough. It's not enough to fight the tide."

Hawke tries to puzzle that out - sometimes Father likes to speak in riddles. "But who can fight the tide?"

His brief smile flickers, and what's behind it is only sad. So bright and so sad that she wishes she hadn't said anything at all.

"It was midsummer, on a very hot day, that I was introduced to the last student I would ever teach. Not that I taught her much of anything." He looks down, searching the past, looking for just the right words. "I had seven students then. I was mostly training the younger ones, the nervous ones, the ones no one else had much time for - the truly spectacular students all had their own private tutors. It had been eight, but a plague came through and even the healers couldn't - I couldn't… I lost one. There were some Templars who didn't make it, and five of the older Tranquil. They don't always notice they're ill until it's much too late. Quite a loss for the Circle, though I didn't realize it at the time, or what it meant."

Hawke's only seen one Tranquil in her life, and she rather wishes she never had. Father says it's even worse when you know who they were before.

"My new student came from Antiva. Alanza Teresa Melina Vasquez del Treviso, and Maker help you if you tripped over that - she was not the forgiving kind of girl. It was strange right from the start, Kirkwall didn't see many from the Antivan circles, though all of them move mages around on occasion. If one place has a particular speciality, or if… if it would be more 'stabilizing' for a young mage to go elsewhere."

"Away from their families." Hawke says, angry for a pile of reasons all at once. It's true that sometimes the Templars will keep a mage's letters from reaching their families, that they'll take away children who don't want to go. But Father says they'll save children too, before the rest of the town can kill them for being what they are. They'll keep letters, rather than let a mage know that home isn't home anymore. Hawke knows Father doesn't want her to judge them - magic is frightening and people get scared, even mothers and fathers - but she can't quite forgive anyone for being that much a coward.

"Yes, sometimes." Father says. "Alanza though… fifteen was an odd time for such a move, and so distant, when there were perfectly good Circles closer to home. I think… now I'm rather sure she was being thrown clear of something. Antiva can play their politics as bloody as anywhere, when they get a mind to. Whoever sent her to Kirkwall, I think they thought it was safer to have her as far away as possible from whatever was going to happen."

"She didn't like you?" Hawke says. All right, so she's a bit biased, but it's hard to imagine anyone hating Father.

"I was patient. I listened to the Senior Enchanters, I followed the Templars' rules, at least when they were around to watch me do it. By that point I'd even refrained from pranking them every chance I got. I stopped more trouble than I started, and I tried to be a good example. I suppose I wanted to be a mentor of sorts. So I'm fairly certain Alanza loathed me more than anyone."

"What happened?"

"All she wanted to do was go home, to go back to her Circle in Antiva. She was… unimpressed with the quality of Free Marches magic, and our mages. Kirkwall's Templars weren't as handsome as the ones she left behind, either. I have the feeling the family name went a lot further there than it did at the Gallows towards giving her some measure of freedom."

Father flexes his wounded hand absently, and Hawke sees the faintest shimmer of healing magic beneath the bandage, though it doesn't last long. He's not recovered yet, it'll take at least a full day for that, but he's on his way. The blood magic probably didn't help - and Maker, there's a thought she never expected to have.

"The Tower works for some mages rather well. Maybe too well - being shut up away from the rest of the world doesn't provide the greatest perspective, or encourage kind feelings toward strangers. Of course, for the ones who don't quite fit in, or want to stay behind walls… Alanza was disrespectful and disdainful and had this marvelous penchant for setting things on fire. Constantly in trouble, blatantly ignoring the rules, insulting the Templars in three languages - it's not the reputation you want to have leading into a Harrowing. She was young for it, but the Senior Enchanters… I don't know. I don't know why it all happened the way it did. If someone cut a deal or they didn't see the point of waiting or if they just hoped she'd go into the Fade and not come back."

"She was a blood mage, wasn't she?" Carver hazards a guess. "That's what this is about."

Father looks sad again, and the sort of tired that comes from holding something very heavy for a long time.

"Alanza was rude and impatient and had a temper like a lightning strike, and the only thing she hated more than all of us were mages who relied on anything beyond themselves. Only talentless jackasses needed to beg demons for power and the ones who did deserved what they got - her words, though she was better with that infinite level of disdain. Everyone looked at her saw a mage pushing at the edge - they saw a danger, an inevitability, because she made them angry. Because they didn't like her and she didn't give them a reason to. I saw something else… though it took a little time, and a bit of a brawl. All-"

"-the best things do." Hawke grins, finishing that one for him. Every one of Father's best stories starts or ends with a fight - or both, with another during the intermission. "So you fought? Did you win?"

"Oh, that came later. We used to sneak away and duel, prepare for her Harrowing while she'd pretend to be bored and talk about all the rich families in Antiva I was supposed to think badly of - and yes, let's lie and say I always won and never had to sneak back to the dorm in my scorched smalls."

Carver's had to do that the once. Hawke's not exactly sure how Mother still knew to blame her for it, Bethy being the mage and all, but it wasn't like she was wrong.

"That first fight, though… she was arguing with a few of the older mages. A little group with no interest in anyone who didn't have magic. I think they would have sunk the boats if there'd been a way to keep the food coming. Their leader fancied himself a Lucrosian - one of the more deluded fraternities you will hopefully never encounter. All the charm of your better Tevinter mage without even the fun of dragons to bow to." Father rolls his eyes. "He was busy comparing Antivan nobility to things I will not be telling you about when you're older, while she made an extensive list of farm animals he might know as close relations. Alanza was a good mage, but it was three-on-one. As a responsible member of the Gallows, I felt obligated to responsibly approach their leader and responsibly punch him in the face. Twice. Possibly three times."

Hawke can't wear the grin that flickers across his face without being immediately assigned chores, a punishment for whatever it is she's done that hasn't been found out yet, or whatever she's about to do.

"A considerable number of bruises, a shredded robe and a week in solitary later… well, just one more reason you should never listen to your Father, darlings. He's irredeemable, save for the briefest moments of respectability."

"You were friends." Hawke says. It sounds rather marvelous, to be friends with a mage like that. Bethany's only just starting to throw enough fireballs to make things interesting.

"For a little while. A very little while."

So they've reached the part of the story where things go wrong, then, and there's really little chance it's anything but the Harrowing.

Father hates it: the secrecy, the supposed necessity, the cobbled-together origins of the whole stupid ceremony - it's nowhere in the Chant, nothing Andraste designed or called for. A makeshift, slapdash solution to a problem that doesn't even exist for every mage, barely one facet of a whole list of what might go wrong for the truly powerful. It's not safety, just the illusion of - and that's what Father says when he's feeling generous. Hawke's always wondered if there had been a reason for his anger, just what it was that made the Harrowing so hateful.

"Alanza was sharp, and bright and funny, especially when she forgot about being in Kirkwall long enough to laugh. I think she thought if she got comfortable at all, she'd have to consider what might happen if she never went home. I warned her, of course, about the Harrowing. I told her what it was all about Or I tried to. Alanza laughed - her family'd bought off the information back in Antiva, long before she'd come to the Gallows. The Harrowing was practically a joke to her. A paid vacation to the Fade, that's what she said. If she was afraid at all, I didn't see it." Father rubs a little at his beard, staring into the banked fire, a few embers rising up, winking out in the dark. "I should have been there. She was my responsibility even if they all thought I was an idiot, even if she thought I was an idiot. I should have been in that room."

It's in the way he says it, that Hawke thinks he probably did ask to be, and more than once.

"She didn't… she didn't make it?" Bethany says.

"Officially, she died as an Abomination. Two Templars killed, three more wounded before they could bring her down. It was…" He sighs. "It was. The Gallows wasn't exactly unknown for stories about things going wrong, but still, this was… much uglier than usual."

"… but you don't think she was, what… not a demon?" Carver frowns. "You think they just killed her?"

"I think they tried to just kill her. Or at least someone did. I…" Father rubs at his eyes, but it's a gesture of more than weariness, "I know she had enemies, and her family had enemies. I know that two days prior, she'd gotten word that some of her cousins had been killed on the road back in Antiva. I know that I asked them to hold off on her Harrowing - it was too soon, it was just too damned soon and I don't care that she was smart enough to be ready. I don't care how much she knew or how prepared she was. I know that one of the Templars that died was new. Young, fresh from the Chantry, no family, no one to miss him - and the other? No one even seemed to know his name, or where he came from. Sometimes they do use Templars from outside, but…"

Father twines his fingers together, presses them briefly to his mouth, as if it hurts as much to put the burden down as to keep it, and Hawke wonders if he's ever told this story to anyone before.

"How hard would you fight, how much time would you waste on a foreigner who just made your life more difficult? A spoiled brat who didn't show the proper respect to anyone? How easy would it be, to pocket a few gold - or a lot of gold - and just let it happen, let her get what's coming to her? Allow politics that don't concern you to take care of a girl you don't like and just look the other way until it's over. It's not even doing anything wrong. It's just not doing anything at all."

"So, that was when you left, wasn't it? Because of her, because she died and you knew why."

Hawke already knows she's going to have nightmares about today, that's just a given. It's still unsettling, in a way no monster is ever going to be, to see her Father so bleak and shaken. He's taught them all everything they know of how to be and live and win. He shouldn't be allowed to look like any other man