faithlikeaseed | [IC/OOC] Fade Rift Inbox & Contact

Myr has a visitor.

Not in the traditional sense of a guest to his door, invited or otherwise. This visitor comes quietly into the periphery of his sleeping mind, more a silhouette of a shadow than the easily discernible shape of a man, and there he stays; a leaf on the surface of a still pond.

This dream is one of brightness and light, soft at its edges with nostalgia; there are few shadows here for a visitor to hide within,
but Atticus creates one to suit his purposes, disappearing into the shelter of an arched doorway that surely was always a part of this dream's architecture. Wasn't it? Shrouded, his identity obscured, he can nevertheless feel the dry heat of a Hasmal summer against his skin, smell sweet desert flowers on the air, can hear the distant call of a bird of paradise somewhere within the boughs of the trees that shade the courtyard of Hasmal's Circle of Magi. And there, seated on one of the benches at its center, surrounded by high stacks of parchment paper and sentimental tokens from a life he no longer lives, is Myrobalan. His head bent in concentration, he's writing something furiously--and he isn't alone.

Lounging nearby, a demon has taken some pains to guise itself as a human--but to Atticus' discerning eye, it's easy to mark the creature for what it is: a Pride demon.

For now, Atticus is still; he watches, and waits.

Myr learns things by doing.

He always has, since earliest childhood; where many of the alienage's children could pick up something from simple instructions, he had to be walked through the motions. It went with him into the Circle, where he struggled with the easiest spells until they tried teaching him the gestures first. And where there weren't gestures, he had to make them up; and when he had to memorize new information, it had to be written down, because that teaches him the shape the memory should take.

For all his blindness, none of that has changed; though he's learned different ways to commit things to memory--and there's so much now he needs to memorize about the world because he can't see it any longer--the best and surest way is still to write things down.

And he can still write, in his dreams.

He keeps the demon in front of him: When looked at straight on, it takes the semblance of a man; but out of the corner of the eye it drips with golden radiance, with flaring wings and eyes to adorn them like a peacock rendered in gilt and sunlight. It is terrible to gaze upon as the Golden City must once have been, magnificent as Andraste's army with banners, and it basks there like a dragon. "She was a Lady of miracles," it says conversationally, in the least conversational voice imaginable: A fear-thou-not voice, a voice like thunder and wildfires. "Who through Her Husband's divine power made the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the blind to see.

"That power exists still, for the righteous to take hold of."

Finishing the page he's working on, Myr looks it over once, then transfers it to a short pile with the dragon and serpent of Tevinter locked together in deadly embrace upon it. He looks up then, past the demon that fans a half-seen wing languidly in the breeze, through another archway that--with the impossible architecture of dreams--opens on the wide sun-drenched expanse of the desert. There's an unguarded fondness about the elf's expression, in his dark eyes (not quite so wide and doll-like as another elf of Atticus' acquaintance but the genetic similarity is there, the line of heredity from a grandmother through a son and a daughter to a pair of cousins) as he gazes across the playa toward the horizon.

With all this beauty around him, he can't not stop and appreciate the scenery, just for a little while.

So the Templars were not the ones who blinded him. Interesting.

Atticus has yet to draw a thread of connection between Vandelin and Myr beyond their similar propensity for attracting the attention of pride demons. This one doesn't look to be an imminent danger to the mage it has chosen to fixate upon; Myr's eyes have wandered past it towards a desert horizon that spills out into the forever of the Fade around them.

What an idyllic prison he has conjured into existence for himself.

"That power exists still, for the righteous to take hold of." Yes, that thought is in keeping with Atticus' limited exposure to this young man; righteous and secure in his belief that magic could best serve mankind when tethered like a well bred coursing hound.

Well. If he would choose to spend his dreams in a prison, then let the surroundings better reflect the reality.

Atticus slides one hand across the smooth stone walls of the interior courtyard; spreading outward from his touch, the stone itself changes in a way that is almost imperceptible at first--but so does the air, growing heavy and hot and damp, as though in anticipation of a heavy storm. Overhead, thunderclouds roll in, black with rain. When it begins to fall, the sand dunes grow dark from it, seeming to undulate as the wind picks up. Then a foamy cap forms atop one before it crashes into another.

It isn't a desert anymore; it's a raging sea.

An exchange of pleasant dreams for black nightmares isn't uncommon for a sleeping mage--and given the turmoil of Myr's waking life, it was only a matter of time before this brief interlude of calm ended. His expression darkens to match the thunderheads boiling up on the horizon; he quits the bench, rising to his feet and taking up his staff as the first fat drops plummet from the clouds. He shoots the demon an accusatory glance--the first he's looked straight at it--when the wind rises and licks pages from his careful stacks of parchment, sending them skittering away across the flagstones.

The memories they represent are safely locked away, but it's the principle of the thing that has him scowling. "This is petty," he says, knowing his disapproval to be less than worthless. Don't look at it, don't talk to it, don't give it ideas. He wrenches his gaze away from the creature's ineffable smile, from its tempest-voiced murmuring:

"'Though the darkness comes upon me,
I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm.
I shall endure.'"

Better to act, to bury himself Where he can place his lesser glyphs with a gesture, casting the greater is nearly like a dance, a set sequence of steps as he sweeps out points cardinal and ordinal for a glyph of repulsion. Here and there he works in an extra line, an extra sigil, defining the shape he wants the magic to take so that when at last he completes the design and energizes it, it repels raindrops and retains windblown pages--and forces the demon back.

Unperturbed, it spreads its intangible wings to catch the wind, drifting to the last remaining tree in the courtyard--leafless, snarled, sky-clawing--and roosting there like a puff of thistledown. In the way of things oneiric, the rest of the world's begun to melt away in the rain, the upraised square of flagstones with tree and barrier and mage and pages reduced to an island in the gray-black dimness of the churning, angry sea.

The dream melts away in watercolour streaks of grey and black, its colours caught in the ocean surf as it hurls itself against--and then slowly encroaches across--the raised stone platform. Only one aspect of the dreamscape doesn't vanish into the sea, because he was never apart of the dream at all.

Atticus stands on the ledge created by the platform and the churning sea, the backs of his heels inches from the water, but it doesn't touch him. Some unseen wind, some powerful current, forces it back away from him, so that waves that should crash into him instead collide with an invisible barrier, and instead rush upwards towards the sky. It doesn't recede again; instead, the platform itself almost seems to sink into the depths of the sea as dark, murky black water rises and rises around them on all sides, only the force of the barrier holding it at bay. When lightning crackles through the atmosphere, it illuminates dark, ghostly shapes drifting and groaning in the deep.

The water that has already spilled onto the platform parts in front of Atticus as he walks towards Myr--but though it stays clear of the shrouded magister, Myr is offered no such protection.

When Atticus speaks, his voice is at once soft; far above them, the roar of the storm is muted by the towering sea waves that bracket them in. "Sometimes, I believe you Southern mages got what you deserved."

Then he reaches out a hand towards the distant surface of the waves, and the sea begins to crash in around them.

Edited 2017-08-14 22:52 (UTC)

I can only apologise for my tardiness - I've been greatly diverted in my work. Did you wish still to speak of magic?

( there's a pause-- )

This is Madame de Cedoux, we spoke previous regarding glyphs.

Edited 2017-08-15 10:01 (UTC)

Flushed by the appearance of a larger predator, the demon explodes into the air; the dovelike wittering of its wings alerts Myr to his sudden danger as color and coherence bleed out of the world. In one fluid motion he draws his spirit blade and rounds on Atticus, actinic blue light illuminating the columns of water that rush up around them.

That he has no idea what to make of his visitor is written clear in the widening of his eyes, the sharp way he draws breath. Demon or spirit or something else he can't know, only that it has unprecedented power to warp the Fade around it--and he does not.

"Sometimes, I believe you Southern mages got what you deserved."

No time to understand what that might mean beyond a veiled provocation, no time to interpret this nightmarish vision, the walls are coming down and he can't swim-- He charges Atticus without thinking, knowing he's outmatched, knowing he's as good as dead but he won't go down without a fight, not this time and never again. He gets three steps before the sea pours in between them in a black liquid rush, shattering his glyph and smashing him against the platform with stunning force. Gone are his spirit blade and staff, ripped from his fingers as the eager currents drag him under.

He has drowned in his dreams often enough to know what happens now and how little there is he can do about it. Give up breathe in let it go let it end, better one quick inhalation and it's over than being torn apart by the malevolent shadows circling closer and closer through the crushing darkness. And yet he still fights, disoriented and holding his breath, struggling and clawing the wrong way through the water--blind to the silvery bubbles that spill upward from his lips as the painful band of panic and hypoxia tightens around his chest.

Maker, save me--!

No need to apologize, madame! [He sounds slightly winded, but otherwise cheery as usual.] Everyone around here seems like they're laden with as much work as they can handle.

And yes, I very much would. Just a moment. [Small noises follow as he finds a place to sit down.]

--There. Where would you prefer to start--and what've you got time for?

Nothing pressing this evening can't wait for tomorrow. ( warmly ) I've looked at these translations so long I fear no words mean anything to me any more.

Is there a particular topic that interests you?

Atticus stands immutable in the thick of the maelstrom, wind whipping his robes around his body and tousling his short hair, but the sea wall itself doesn't touch him. He's close enough to it, though, that when he reaches out to touch it, the water rushes over and between his fingers like wake from a boat.

Maybe two feet away from him in that prison of ocean current, Myr thrashes and struggles like a fish caught on a line, his every effort and propelling himself towards the surface rendered futile as the sea clutches at him and holds him fast; the sea is greedy to keep its victim for itself, to share what it has found with the shadows that prowl ever closer, their low groaning and growling resonating with hunger. Much more of this, Atticus knows, and he will drown; a death from a somniari in the Fade means death in the physical world as well.

The mage's body contorts in painful spasms as the the instinct to breathe finally triumphs over his mind's knowledge that doing so will kill him. Atticus watches. Waits.

There. That's long enough.

Wake up.

[Amused,] There's something I don't miss about reading. I'm glad to provide a break, then.

You'd mentioned that--what was it you called them--"hearth uses"? Of magic. I'd like to hear more about those; we spend more time on magic suited to combat in the Circles.

Wake up.

He comes up sobbing for breath, soaked in fear-sweat and clutching at his chest as if that could drive away the phantom pain of drowning. Blankets tangle around his limbs, constricting--too much in that instant like the feel of the merciless hungry sea all around him and he struggles out of them, throws them off the bed entirely in momentary panic.

Then sits for a long silent time with a fist pressed against his lips, shivering in the cold of a southern night and waiting for the nauseating aftermath of the nightmare to subside. Soon enough the blood's no longer singing in his ears; his heart's no longer pounding and the agony of the ocean in his lungs is little more than a memory.

It's too damn bad the blackout darkness of impending death is with him to stay.

At length, he drags himself out of bed to begin his day.

Edited 2017-08-16 20:44 (UTC)

Yes - yes, I did -

( the ambient sound of Petrana arranging herself, settling in. Probably, in all likelihood, engaged in some of those uses. )

I try not to overuse; it's my husband's belief that to rely on any one tool to the exclusion of others is to court disaster. But there are simple charms and enchantments that might make easier the day - to lace a corset, to raise small barriers around dangerous things, to stir tea or keep a fire burning. Turning pages when one's hands are occupied. Putting food together - I have never been a great cook.

I launder my ( under- ) garments daily, as an example here. And then I will hang them above a set of glyphs, to be dry by the morning.

Edited 2017-08-18 06:39 (UTC)

[He breathes out a soft, surprised "huh!" at all of this. What sounded like frivolity when Sarkan described it sounds eminently practical coming from Petra; what a difference attitude makes.] How is--I'm sorry, let me think about how I want to phrase this.

How is all of this accomplished? That's to say--using the glyphs for instance, do they drive the moisture from the cloth somehow? Or heat the air above them? --I'm trying to think of how the effect might be exactly replicated with what we have, you see. Or if the method of action is altogether different from what we're used to doing.

They are alike to a fire glyph - there is a heat to it - but it is most of all to draw the moisture from the fabric, into the air. Which, of course, must then go somewhere. I give it, ( lightly deprecating, ) to my flowers. And they can be altered only slightly to become a flame - it dries the air far swifter than true flame, it is quite dangerous without care taken.

Recently I have used a spell that I believe you to have no true equivalent to - a means of quickly acquiring a foreign language. In a manner of speaking it is to create affinity between the caster and the subject, in that, in addition to simply absorbing the sight of the letters, I learned from my subject the muscle-memory of writing them, and of understanding.

I was so relieved to find it worked. Many of the spells I know I have only studied, for the purposes of our records-keeping. In Lamorre, there are no books of magic, so - my husband and I intended to write them.

Oh, no, we haven't anything like that. I can't begin to think of how we'd do it, outside of-- [The enthusiasm in his tone mutes.] --magic we ought not turn to. Though if what you're describing doesn't actually touch the mind itself--maybe, [his voice drops in a comment to himself,] spirit, or starting from a healing spell...?

Just how quickly do you learn things with this spell? D'you pick up how things are pronounced, too, or is just the reading of it?

[A delicate pause.] You'd mentioned that magic carries a death sentence, in Lamorre. Were your books meant for a future where it could be freely taught?

They were. Yes. We hope very much to see that day a reality within our lifetimes.

( 'Hope'. They blame her, in the capitol, for his flaming sword - the witch that rides at his side. After all, it could not possibly be that the magic had been his when it is well known to be a woman's sin.

It is war. And she knows, in her bones, that Marius doesn't ride on the empire for the sake of books and peasant women -

but there is room in that future for them. He believes of himself that he is a hero, and if she only has enough time, perhaps she can make him one. If only. )

...in any case, no, I think I would struggle to understand the language spoken aloud, but I am quite confident with the written. It was perhaps a bit more than an hour. My husband would have achieved the thing much swifter, but of the two of us he is the more experienced, the more gifted. Much of my knowledge remains in the realm of theory.

[Ah, so.

It's his cousin with the revolutionary's fire, not him, but that means he's accustomed to hearing it when it manifests. And accustomed, likewise, to wondering what of value might be burned up should it be set free--but if Lamorre is as much the Maker's creation as Thedas (there is but one world, one life, one death, one Fade between all of them, or how else did Petrana get here?), then magic remains a gift and slaughtering those who wield it a sin.]

I'll hope for your sake as well. And pray we find a way to send those of you back, who wish to return.

...Which did you pick up, in this case? Even if you struggle, I can't think it would be so difficult to learn it spoken--though thinking of my own experiences in that realm maybe I'm being overconfident. Was he your teacher, then? Your husband?

( He doesn't mean the words to wound; he cannot know how they lodge between her ribs. The truth that she doesn't wish to look at.

Petrana doesn't want to go home. She doesn't sound like a revolutionary, in truth, she sounds like someone who has spent a great deal of time justifying the things she has to live with, the things she fights with, the things she cannot be seen to disagree with. Lamorre is no better than the man she lies beside at night, but that doesn't make his crimes or his cruelty the lesser - he claims the moral highground for his wounded fucking pride and what is she to do but live with it? But hold it in her hands and make something of it.

She had a child to protect. She did her best.

It is much quieter, when she speaks again, but steady enough. )

He was. It was -

He felt that it was necessary for me to learn.

( Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn't. The choice was not hers to make, but the consequence hers to live with. )

And I am a quick student, ( more lightly, ) of his magic, and, in this case, of Tevene.

[Why did he feel so? some part of him wants to ask.

Another part of him whispers, Don't.

He dithers between the opposing instincts a moment, then follows her lead.]

Tevene! That will come in useful. Was it, [a moment's hesitation] the magister or his miserable accomplice you used for your spell? Does the quality of their writing matter? And you said--you learn the muscle-memory, yes? So are the characters you write formed exactly as your subject's would be?

[Forgive him. His relentless curiosity is sometimes a vehicle to exorcise fear.]

Mssr Vedici was the conduit for my learning - unfortunately he is left-handed and I am not, myself, so my letters are not precisely as he would write them. Clumsier. I must teach my right hand what my left has learned. But he was cooperative enough, and a skilled translator, which was what I required. I believe the Artemaeus boy would have been most unsuitable to my needs, as he was unsettled in the extreme by the casting.

( And then by her chillingly delivered threat to have him gagged if he didn't hush and let her focus. Petra is not of Thedas; she has no understanding of how charged it is to threaten a mage with such a thing, here, only that the mouthy little prick was shattering her focus when she'd politely requested he not do so several times already. )

An imperfect strategy - I'd not have wished to learn the trade language here that way, I built myself a foundation without magic before I began to use such short-cuts - but useful, so far as it goes. And I will improve, in time, on my own.

[It's not charitable to laugh at the description of Benedict as "unsuitable" but it gets a snort out of Myr anyway.

Admiring,] Imperfect, but better than anything we've got in the realm. I've got a hunch of something that might, maybe, let us do some of what you do but it's nothing solid yet. And I think you'd still outstrip me, even if it could be made to work.

[His tone is thoughtful, then:] Could you use it to learn to mimic someone's handwriting in a language you already know? Well enough to forge something written by him? Not an option with Magister Vedici, I know, but if the Inquisition's able to lay hands on someone else with the clout to issue orders, it could be useful.

( Huh--

Petrana's voice is more thoughtful when she answers, )

Do you know, I believe that I could. Obviously, over time, the way that I write something will settle into my own handwriting...but if I were to make a conscious effort for it not to...

I might have to work with them a little longer, for such precision, but I believe that I could.

[His grin's audible,] Might be worth trying out with another member of the Inquisition first, and then take your proof to command so they know you can do it. They'll know the best places to sow confusion with that.

[It doesn't yet occur to him that such confusion might also be sown internally.]

I'm wondering also--would it be hard to extend this beyond writing? To other skills? --Wait, let me back that up. You spoke about learning Trade the hard way; are there other drawbacks to learning this way? Beyond losing your ability to learn without it.

It's simply that the hard way is also, by far, the better way. For instance, the language of magic in Lamorre - I could not learn it this way, and then practise magic as I do. I must be able to think in those words. I must have a deep understanding of the language that you simply will not acquire in such a - a surface-level education.

It is a beginning, that's all. To rely on it entirely - to not practise, or develop further - is to risk losing all nuance in translation. It is lightly overlaid, not deeply stitched.

[IC/OOC] Fade Rift Inbox & Contact

Timeframe: the night after Myr's visit to the dungeon.

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