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Sonder. That’s what they call it when you realize that all the strangers you pass by have lives just as vivid and complex as your own. Take, for example, the priestess I just walked by. Does she like strawberries? Does she have a sister? Or, perhaps, the man preparing the incense. What does he do in his spare time? Perhaps he writes. What about the initiate over there? Is she from Kirkwall, or did she move here from somewhere else? Did her family disapprove of her joining the Chantry? Or did they push her into it? Every last one of these people has their own life, their own world. They have friends and families and likes and dislikes and things they treasure and people they care about.
It’s too bad they’ll all be dead in a week.
It’s for the greater good. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
These are our oppressors, our captors.
They could stop it- all of it- the templars, the humiliation, the abuse, but they do not.
Instead they stand by and allow it all.
The Grand Cleric does not see, will not see. She covers her eyes, looks away, as Meredith and her cronies commit atrocities. She is complacent. She is complicit. She and all the other here, in what is supposed to be a temple to a woman who preached freedom.
Now, though, as I look around this room, this holy place, I do not see jailers. I don’t see the cruelty and oppression. I don’t see the pain that has been wrought.
I just see people.
People with lives.
People with feelings.
People with families.
But it’s too late.
The ingredients are gathered, carefully placed, assembled into an instrument of death.
All it needs now is heat. Simple enough, an apprentice could cast the spell.
One spell and the chantry crumbles.
One spell and all these people die.
One spell and the mages are free.