The possibility that the Kirkwall Templars could be acting illegally was a frightening one. It was one thing to try and deal with Templars who obeyed Chantry regulations, it was quite another to deal with those who didn't even obey their own code of conduct. No matter how bad Circles were normally, a Circle with a rogue Templar contingent would be even worse.
Anders also brought up the possibility that Templars disobeying Chantry law could increase the split between the Circles and the Templars, something he was (or perhaps he and Justice were) very conflicted about.
“On the one hand, good riddance to the Templars,” as he explained it. “But on the other—war is always the worst outcome, always.” he snorted. “That's something any healer will tell you. There has to be a way to help the mages peacefully." his expression was troubled and uncertain, but his conviction was obvious. "The more volatile the split gets, the more likely everything is to turn into all-out violence, which I don't really feel like dealing with.”
It was decided that it would be safer to find Karl, and take any potential evidence and present it themselves to the Grand Cleric or the Guard, rather than have it work its way slowly by mouth, and put more mages in danger by doing so.
Abigail, Anders, Carver, Varric and Nathaniel all headed to the Chantry. Bethany opted out, and she stayed with Velanna and Sigrun at their home. Velanna and Sigrun's house in the Alienage would be at least a temporarily safe spot for an apostate to hide, as Templars tended to search the Alienage last, especially if the mage they were looking for was a human.
The Hightown Chantry was enormous, ostentatious, and dominated a good portion of that part of the city. Even at night, lights shone from the windows and a fire burned sluggishly in the brazier out front.
The huge front door was unlocked, as always, but they avoided it. Instead, they took a smaller, less obvious side door. The inside of the Chantry was thick with incense and candle smoke, and was quiet, all the worshipers and Sisters having gone for the night. Some torches were still lit, but it was still fairly dim inside.
“Where might Karl be?” Abigail asked, looking around.
“One of the back rooms,” Varric suggested. “Better set up for a trap, that way.”
The back halls didn't smell quite so strongly of herbs and incense, which was a definite bonus. The back halls were smaller, darker and twisting, not frequently opened to the public. The fact that there were no locked doors in their way made them suspicious, but convinced them they were going the right way. They found Karl quite quickly, in a small room whose door was open. Another bad sign.
Anders pushed the door further open, and it swung inward.
Karl stood with his back to them, clad in a shapeless gray Circle robe.
“Anders, I know you too well.” Karl's voice was dull, listless. “I knew you would never give up.”
“What's wrong?” Anders put a foot forward. “Why are you talking like--?”
Karl turned, and even in the dim light, the sunburst pattern on his forehead was clear.
“Oh, no--” Anders whispered.
“Anders,” Nathaniel put a hand on his shoulder, curling his fingers into Anders’ coat. “Justice—don't--”
“They can't do that,” Anders took one aborted step towards Karl. “They can't—they can't--”
“I was too rebellious,” Karl explained, his expression utterly blank, like a mask. Revulsion curled in the pit of Abigail’s stomach. “Like you. The Templars knew I had to be made an example of.”
“No,” Anders shook his head.
“How else will mages ever master themselves?” Karl postulated. “You'll understand, Anders—as soon as the Templars teach you to control yourself.”
There was a footstep in the hall.
“Oh, damn,” Varric muttered, putting a bolt to his crossbow. Each of them wrapped their hands around their weapon of choice.
In the doorway appeared a very large, very armored Templar. Everyone collectively moved back.
“This is the Warden,” Karl said, gesturing to Anders. “I suspect he knows other apostates as well.” Karl's dull eyes flicked to the staff in Abigail’s hands.
“No,” Anders' eyes began to gleam, and he went to his knees, clutching his temples. Lines of white fire spread from his eyes, across his face, until it looked like his skin was full of tiny cracks. He surged to his feet. “You will never take another mage as you took him!” Anders roared, his voice echoing like a demon's, his eyes and hands burning with a hot white fire.
There was more than just the one Templar, but Anders—Justice—took most of them on without a second thought. Before anyone else could so much as raise their weapons, Anders had taken down three of the oncoming Templars, slamming two into walls with fatal force and consuming one in a blast of blue fire. There were several more Templars, but all were dealt with just as quickly. At last, they were the only ones still standing. There was a lull, as everyone waited for more Templars to arrive.
“Anders,” Nathaniel approached him slowly. “Justice. Calm yourselves—we need to get out of here before more come.”
Anders' shoulders heaved, and gradually, the blue light died from his skin. “I'm fine,” Anders muttered. “We're alright.”
“Anders?” Karl started, sounding...surprised. “What did you do?”
“Karl!” Anders hurried to his friend's side.
“It's like...you brought a piece of the Fade into the world,” Karl leaned forward, pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. “I—I'd forgotten what that feels like--”
The room went very cold all of a sudden, frost curling up the walls. Abigail recognized the signs of a mage with little control, and eyed Karl, her hands still clenched tightly around her staff.
“Karl, how did they do it?” Anders asked, taking Karl's shoulders. “You've been Harrowed for thirty years—they can't do that--”
Karl gave a dark laugh, then choked. “The Knight-Commander does as she pleases,” he said. “Especially to catch apostates.”
“You have to tell the Grand Cleric, someone--”
Karl shook his head and grabbed Anders' arms, tightly. “Anders, whatever you did, it's fading,” he said. “Please, please, kill me before I forget again—you cannot imagine it, Anders, all the color, all the music in the world, gone--”
“Karl, no!” Anders shook his head, and his eyes gleamed momentarily. “No, we can't—but I--” he shook his head and said several more sentence fragments, as if arguing with himself.
“Maybe there's a cure of some kind,” Nathaniel suggested.
“Can you cure a beheading?” Anders demanded.
“We can hardly just kill him!” Abigail exclaimed. “There has to be a way to help—oh no,” she breathed, hearing footsteps pounding in the distance.
“We have to get out of here,” Carver said, grabbing Abigail's arm. “Come on--”
“No—Anders, please--” Karl held on tighter to Anders. “I would rather die a mage, Anders—don't leave me like this, please, please--”
“Decide right now, because more Templars are coming--” Carver started, before a broadly applied Silence sent Abigail, Anders and Karl to their knees.
Nathaniel hauled Anders to his feet, Varric grabbed Abigail, and the group tore out of the Chantry. Anders was glowing again, and fought through several Templars before Nathaniel dragged him away. Templars were swarming the Chantry, several more Silences making Abigail's head ring and her vision blur.
Varric and Carver half-carried, half-dragged her out of the Chantry while Anders hurled blue fireballs at the Templars and roared in a voice like a Rage demon. Nathaniel managed to fell a few Templars with strategic arrows, but mostly, they focused on leaving as fast as they possibly could.
They ran out of Hightown, the Templars hot on their heels, but when they got into Lowtown they turned the Templars around until they were eventually thrown off their trail. Then they hurried back to Sigrun and Velanna's place in the Alienage, jumping at every shadow. Even the main square of the Alienage had several Templars searching it, so they went down a back alley and came in through a side door.
“What in the name of all the Creators did you do?” Velanna demanded before they were even fully in the door. “There are Templars everywhere!”
“It was a trap,” Abigail said. “You were right. It was...bad.” she sat down, her legs shaking, her chest tight. Bethany was by her side immediately.
“I left him there,” Anders leaned against the wall, his chest heaving. “I just—left him there.”
“We could hardly have done much else,” Nathaniel said, putting a hand on Anders’ shoulder. “There were too many Templars--”
Anders surged to his feet. “We know the Templars are doing things illegally now,” he said. “Karl is a Harrowed mage—and they made him Tranquil. That goes against every one of their laws--”
“What about for dangerous mages?” Carver asked. “Couldn't they make him Tranquil if they said he was dangerous enough?”
“He's a teacher!” Anders exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “He teaches healing and potions making! He can barely cast a barrier spell—he's no battle mage!”
“Look, before we talk about that, will you all shut up? We still have to do something about all the Templars,” Sigrun hissed, peeking through the shutters of a window which looked out over the square. “Ah, Ancestors—should we get out of the city?” she asked the fellow Wardens. “They know we're here now--”
“No,” Anders snapped. “I'm not leaving. Not yet.”
“Maybe you don't have to leave permanently,” Abigail said, a thought striking her. “I need to make a trip to the Sundermount,”
“Why?” Velanna asked.
“There's a Dalish Clan we need to meet with,”
“Which one?”
“I don't know—I didn't exactly get their name.”
Velanna scowled. “Why not?”
“The circumstances were—unusual,” she took the amulet out of her belt pouch. “A witch we met in Ferelden gave us this, and if we did what we said we'd do with it, she would help us. She helped us get out of Ferelden, so, we need to bring this up the Sundermount.”
“We would put the Dalish in danger with our presence,” Velanna said. “The Sundermount is already too close to safely stay for longer than a fortnight--”
“We could talk to Aveline instead,” Carver said. “Maybe she could help—if the Circle is breaking laws, she'd know what to do.”
“But what do we do right now?” Sigrun asked.
Nathaniel peered out the shutters. “Stay here for the night,” he said. “Anders—do you think we need to--?”
“They probably don't even have my phylactery,” Anders said. “And at this point...” he gestured to himself. “It probably won't work very well.”
“What's a phylactery?” Carver asked. “You’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve never heard of it.”
“A device used to track Circle mages,” Velanna explained with a scowl. “Blood magic.”
“Blood magic?” Carver and Bethany exchanged worried and confused looks.
“It is a vial of blood with a tracking spell attached to it,” Velanna said. “Hypocrites.” she wrinkled her nose.
“And you're safe from that?” Abigail asked Anders. “How?”
“The blood they have is pre-Warden and pre-Justice,” Anders said, running a hand down his face. “It turns out, if you drink enough mysterious liquids, you can dodge the tracking spell. There's a nastier way to trick it, but I think we should be alright for now.”
“What's the other way to trick it?' Bethany asked.
Anders grimaced. “You drink someone else's blood,” he said. At their shocked looks, he raised his hands and added “It doesn’t involve any blood sacrifices or some other nonsense! Honestly, all it takes is a papercut and a few drops and you're set for at least a few hours.”
“You're right,” Varric said. “That's definitely the nastier way.”
“The Warden initiation involves drinking a whole goblet of darkspawn blood,” Sigrun interjected. “I don't really see the problem.”
“It does?” Abigail asked.
“It does,” Velanna, Sigrun, Anders and Nathaniel all nodded.
“That's disgusting.”
“Sure it is, but it lets you sense darkspawn,” Sigrun said. “Now will all of you hush?”
The Templars prowled the streets all night, into the early hours of the morning, but they eventually left the Alienage without so much as bashing anyone's door in.
Hahren Josiah, the cantankerous and very elderly Hahren of the Kirkwall Alienage, may have had something to do with that. Sigrun went out to see what was going on, and spotted him harassing a pair of Templars, shaking his walking stick at them and scolding them for scaring the Alienage residents. Both of the Templars looked a little embarrassed to be shouted at by a tiny old elvhen man, and soon after that they were gone.
Varric went out to see if they were still searching the rest of Lowtown, and came back with the news that it was safe for the Hawkes to return home. Nathaniel and Anders deigned to stay at Velanna and Sigrun's for at least the next day, until they could be sure that the Templars' search had slowed.
The Hawkes returned to their home, and Carver immediately went to fetch Aveline.
“What is it, Abigail?” Aveline asked the minute she stepped in the door. “Carver wouldn't tell me.”
“The Chantry's breaking laws,” Bethany said immediately.
Aveline frowned. “How so?”
“It's a long story,” Abigail said. “But the Templars made at least one Harrowed mage Tranquil—that's illegal, by the Chantry's own laws.”
Aveline sighed and ran a hand down her face. “Would you be the reason the Templars were in such a huff this morning?” she asked.
“That’s quite possible,” Abigail said. “What did they say?”
“The Knight-Commander herself came storming in to yell at the captain, and then the Viscount,” Aveline said. “Apparently some Gray Wardens tried to break into the Gallows and rescue a friend of theirs—would that be your Tranquil mage?”
“He wasn't in the Gallows, he was in the Hightown Chantry,” Bethany said. “The Templars laid a trap for the Wardens.”
“And they broke their own laws to do it,” Abigail said.
Aveline gritted her teeth. “I don't have much influence over the captain,” she said. “This is bad—this is very bad. If Templars ignore their own laws--”
“Nothing good comes of it,” Carver said in a dark voice.
“No, it doesn't.” Aveline thought for a moment. “I can't go to the captain or the Viscount with just one Tranquil mage,” she said. “And if you're sure his Tranquility is illegal--”
“It is,” Abigail said.
“Then I wouldn't put it past the Templars to have changed his records, or make it harder for us to get to them. It'd be my word against the Templars.”
“Damn,” Abigail muttered. “I was hoping you could do something...”
“Not yet,” Aveline said. “If I had more evidence, I probably could.” she frowned. “Something isn't sitting right with the captain,” she said. “Maybe he knows about this...I'll try and look into it, Abigail.”
“Thank you,” Abigail leaned back, taking a breath. “We'll see if we can get you more information.”
“Was it Gray Wardens who tried to rescue the mage?” Aveline asked. “Or did you get mistaken for them?”
“No, there were two Gray Wardens with us,” Abigail said. “There's actually four in total.”
“Abigail...” Aveline sighed. “That won't really help your case against the Chantry. That business in Amaranthine...the Chantry hasn’t outright declared the Order criminals yet, but I’m sure the only reason they haven’t is because of the backlash.”
“You should meet them,” Bethany said. “A lot of what they talked about sounded...strange. Like the Chantry's been breaking their own rules for a long time.”
“And are you really sure of how reliable they are?” Aveline looked dubious. “The Chantry isn’t exactly wrong in their distrust. It was by a Warden’s order than Amaranthine was destroyed.”
“So far, they've been alright,” Abigail said. “If you wanted to meet them, we could do that now, actually.”
Aveline nodded and got to her feet. “That would probably be a good idea.”
So Abigail took Aveline to Sigrun and Velanna's house. Nathaniel and Anders were still there, and Velanna wasn't exactly happy to see a member of the Guard on her doorstep, but none of them could fault the usefulness of having an ally in the Guard.
“So you're all here because the Chantry drove you out of Ferelden?” Aveline asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And not because of Amaranthine.”
“It's a bit more complicated than that,” Anders said. “Apparently the Commander annoyed them with her very presence—they wanted to drag her back to the Circle after she was done with the darkspawn. If they got her, they'd've gotten me and Velanna too.”
“We're not sure how legal that is, actually,” Sigrun said. “The Seekers leaned really hard on the King and Queen, otherwise they would've let us stay.”
“And what about Amaranthine?” Aveline asked, raising her eyebrows. “Would that have anything to do with why the Seekers were so very annoyed with her?”
Sigrun looked down.
“We didn't want the Commander to do that,” Anders muttered. “But she didn't have a choice.”
“How so?”
“Well, it being completely infested with darkspawn and most of the city dead was a good start,” Nathaniel said.
“If she'd tried to save Amaranthine, Vigil's Keep would've been overrun,” Sigrun said quietly.
Aveline sat back in her seat. “A hard choice.” her face was unreadable.
“The hardest,” Anders murmured.
“It was not,” Velanna said. “The choice was clear.”
Sigrun put a hand over Velanna's. “Look, we've gone round and round about this,” she said. “But that was the Commander's choice, and it made the Chantry angry enough to go after her, and us. That's why we're here.”
Aveline rubbed her forehead. “I don't know all of what's been happening,' she said. “I know the Templars here are—different, more aggressive, than the ones in Ferelden. They have a hold on the Guard and the Viscount I don't like.”
“Not surprised,” Anders muttered.
“I'll look into this business with the Knight-Commander,” Aveline assured them. “I would advise you leave Kirkwall, however.”
“And where exactly are we supposed to go?” Velanna demanded. “Any shemlen nation is controlled by your Chantry--”
“What about Orzammar?” Abigail asked.
“We’ve thought about it before,” Nathaniel said. “We would've gone west from Vigil's Keep, towards the Dalish Clans in the Frostbacks, but we kept running into trouble. We can't go through the Deep Roads, of course—Kal'hirol is cleared out, but not the Roads between there and Orzammar, and Kal’hirol itself is much too close to Amaranthine.”
“Here, we're like more refugees,” Anders said. “No one looks twice at us—well, maybe at you,” he elbowed Velanna. “But if you're mangey enough, no one thinks anything of you.”
“Not until you attack the Hightown Chantry, anyway,” Aveline said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Yes, not until that.”
Aveline leaned back in her seat. “What are your plans?” she asked.
“I need to go to the Sundermount,” Abigail said. “I thought maybe it would be a good idea to bring the four of them with me.”
“Mm,” Aveline nodded. “There's been some trouble up that way recently—I'll see if I can't get the Guards out of your way when you head out. If you're going, you need to do it soon.”