As Asala stepped outside of the gate that led into Haven proper, a cold wind brushed against her face. She shivered and drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders, as she fondly reminisced about the hearth back in the tavern. While one hand clutched a handful of her collar, the other was used to cup the heat from her mouth so that her nose didn't freeze off. As she looked out from Haven's entrance, she found herself surprised once more at the volume of tents. The village itself had proven itself too small to hold both the mages and templars, and overflowed outside the walls into a sea of tents.
She turned and decided to cut through the side where there were more mages than templars. While she had nothing against the templars, they had a tendency to watch her as she walked, or at least, she felt like they did. She entertained thoughts that maybe it was just all in her head, but still. She was more comfortable among the mages. As she cut through, offered a wave to Donovan as she passed, as he seemed to be lecturing a group of mages. Once on the other side of the tents, she angled herself and headed toward the frozen lake.
From what she had gathered it was where Cyrus was last seen, and sure enough she eventually recognized his figure on the dock. She offered a wave as she approached.
He didn’t seem to see her at first, which was perhaps understandable. He was sitting crosslegged on the structure, an assortment of what looked like leather-bound books spread over his lap and the planks around him. He held a thin charcoal pencil in one hand, and was scribbling something onto a page about as fast as someone could write, by the looks of it. As she approached, Asala was able to see that all of the books were filled with the same writing, and it wasn’t really scribble at all—his penmanship seemed to default to an elegant, but somewhat minimal script. The book he was working in was filled more with numbers than letters, almost after the manner of a Qunari engineer.
The sound of her feet over the snow seemed to finally alert him to her approach, however, and he finished off the line he was writing on before turning his head in her direction. He blinked a few times, almost as if emerging from some kind of trance, and only then did he appear to actually properly register her presence: his eyes sharpened, and he half-smiled, a touch sly as usual.
“I do not believe we’re due for another lesson for a few hours yet. Don’t tell me you missed me.” That he was joking was obvious from the slight sarcastic edge to the words, as though he expected her attitude towards him to be rather the opposite.
"Uh... hm," she murmured as she shook her head in the negative. Then her eyes widened and she held her hands up submissively, fearing that she may have just accidently insulted. "N-n-not that you... I... it is just..." she stammered before closing her eyes and sighing. A blush was seeping into her features but the breath she took next seemed to ease her somewhat. She was aware of ridiculous she seemed at the moment, and the flush in her cheeks only deepened because of it. He laughed, a surprisingly understated thing for someone who didn’t seem to have any issues drawing all the attention in a room. His shoulders shook slightly with it, but there was no malice or condescension in his expression. Instead of continuing to stutter, she shook her head and tried to forge ahead.
She was frustrated with herself, and her cheeks puffed for a moment before she spoke, "It is just... there was nothing else for me t-to do." she said. They were caught up on their requisitions for potions. Injuries were also at a minimum, and nothing so severe as to require her attention. Aurora and Donovan were busy trying to instill some temperance into the mages, and Pierre had lessons from Larissa. She had nothing on schedule besides her own lesson later that day.
Asala's eyes fell onto the book that Cyrus was working on, and she tilted her head inquisitively. "What, uh, what are you working on?" she asked.
He glanced down at his work, almost as if surprised to see it there, but the impression quickly passed, and he gestured at her to sit down near him, moving a few of the other books around so as to make that possible. “Closing the Breach.” He shrugged, the way he said it making the whole thing sound like it was simple. The notes, though, gave the lie to that, rather obviously. “Magic is notoriously difficult to pin down in precise terms, but there are some things that can be quantified. The Qunari are actually better at it than almost anyone else. Perhaps because they are disposed to treat everything as a matter for mathematics.” He smoothed out the paper he’d just written on, tracing a finger down the edge of the page.
“While it’s hardly the whole story, it’s a valuable approach. Calculations like these were how Cassius and I figured out the trick to time magic.” He sounded distant, like he was remembering something, and ambivalent, like he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. He shook his head though, and glanced over at her from the corner of an eye.
“For now, it’s at least a preliminary approach. How has your dispelling practice been going?”
"It is... coming along," Asala admitted. While she was adept in healing and barriers, other forms of magic did not come as easily. She had very little formal training in the other types of magic, only what Aurora and the other mages could teach her while they traveled, and dispelling seemed counterintuitive, considering. Though she could fling simple small fire, ice, and lightning spells, they were nothing compared to what she witnessed Cyrus do on a regular basis.
She took a seat and looked at her hands for a moment. Asala then spread them apart and she concentrated, her brows furrowing in the effort. Soon her hands began to glow green and a green bubble formed in between them, but unlike her ordinary barrier spells, this one did not appear to be solid. Asala sighed as she stared at the dispel bubble. "It is hollow inside. It only dispels things that try to pass through, but magic is still able to work inside." An experiment with Estella revealed that.
Cyrus shifted gracefully up into a crouch, moving himself until he was perched on the edge of the dock in front of her, balance apparently not something he needed to worry about any more than a cat did. He cocked his head to the side, examining the shape of the spell with interest. “Hold the spell there.” He murmured it in a soft voice, a clear indication of his absorption. It was almost possible to see him thinking, his eyes lit with an almost childlike excitement at the prospect of an interesting puzzle to solve.
He moved his hands so that they were at the top and bottom of the sphere, perpendicular to her own, and then his hands began to glow softly blue. He touched the greenish magic between her hands, and a spark jumped around inside, like lightning contained in a ball. The corner of his mouth turned up. “Fascinating. Solid, and hollow. It seems barriers have seeped into your essence, Asala.” It was inflected with humor, but he didn’t seem to be entirely jesting.
His hands still in place, he moved his eyes from their hands to hers. “There’s no reason to change what works. Are you familiar with how to compress your barriers, make them as small as possible, and then expand them? If you can minimize the volume inside, and make sure your target is hit by the outer shell, it should work just the same as mine does. Here.” He half-rotated, so that he could point out towards a piece of driftwood stuck in the frozen lake. It lit on fire, bursting into a bright conflagration.
“It’s a large area, but not a strong version of the spell. Try banishing that.”
The spell between her hands fizzled out as Asala turned toward the fire. She frowned for a moment, quietly wishing the flame was closer to ward off the cold. Still, she held out her hands, palm outwards, as if she was trying to warm with with the distant fire. Soon, however, the familiar green glow enveloped her hands, and a tiny bright green sphere appeared in the middle of the flames. Her brows contorted and she bit the corner of her lip as she concentrated. It was different than controlling her ordinary barriers. Once she got a good feel of her sphere, she slowly began to move her hands apart.
Mimicking her motion, the barrier likewise began to grow in volume, at least until it grew to about a yard in diameter. Asala tried to hold the dispel barrier together, but it still began to twist and deform until it dispersed entirely. Though the dispel fizzled out, it still snuffed out a circle of flame in the wood, though its edges were still alight. "Wait, wait, wait," she bade eagerly, "I have an idea."
Her hands slipped into the green glow again, though this time instead of a sphere, the dispel manifested in flat square. Instead of trying to regulate its size, Asala simple swiped her hand, causing the square to wipe across the driftwood, extinguishing the fire wherever it touched. It took a pair of passes to get all of the flames, and by the end of it a film of sweat had worked itself onto her forehead, but her goal was accomplished. She turned back to Cyrus beaming with a wide smile on her lips.
Cyrus seemed to find this quite amusing, if the chuckling was anything to go by. He shook his head, grinning back at her. “Hardly the most efficient method, but remarkably creative, I’ll give you that.” Even when his laughter died away, his smile remained, and he waved a hand. “You know, it takes most people at least a month to make that much progress on this spell, and more to master it. If master is even the right word to use.” He rolled his eyes, some of the sharpness returning to his expression.
“When we close the Breach, I want you to direct the mages. We’ll need someone trustworthy holding both groups together, and the Commander can doubtless take care of the templars. Worst case scenario, you can channel whatever efforts the mages muster in the right direction, at least, with those barriers of yours.” He arched a brow, perhaps in anticipation of a protest.
"D-direct?" Asala sputtered, "What... what do you mean b-by direct?" she asked, the unsettling image of her standing in front of a formation of mages lingering in her mind.
He waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing too unsettling, I assure you. I will be asking them all to cast dispel magic at the same time, after the templars have cleansed the Breach to the best of their abilities. All you have to do is relay the signal to the rest and perform the spell also. Some of them are still edgy around the templars, and will doubtless be uncomfortable being so close to a mass cleanse. You’ll also all be ingesting some amount of lyrium beforehand to increase your efficacy, and some of them haven’t had any in a while. Might be a little jumpy, but a barrier should take care of any wayward spell residue, no?”
"Uh..." She was a comforted a bit, but still very clearly nervous about the whole idea. "I, uh, I s-suppose so..." She said, scratching under her horn. To be honest, she would probably be a little anxious after a mass cleanse too. She made a mental note to speak to Aurora afterward, but otherwise nodded, though reluctantly.
"What... uh, what will you be doing?" Asala asked curiously.
His smile widened, looking some strange mix of that innocent delight and something much more savvy. “I am going to be casting a very particular spell of my own devising. It should stabilize the Breach at its weakest point after all that disruption, and make it much easier for Stellulam and Romulus to close it.” He nodded down at the books still on the dock. “With a bit more work, I should also be able to modify it to more permanently steady their marks as well, which are bound to expand after what they do—assuming they do not disappear when the Breach does.” It seemed like he didn’t think they would, though the exact nature of his hypotheses was difficult to pin down. Cyrus wore a lot of expression openly on his face, but for all that his thoughts remained obscure.
"That is..." she began, but interrupted herself as she finally parsed everything he'd just said. "Wait, disappear? They could disappear? That is a possibility?" She asked, her eyes wide and the worry written clear on her face. "That... That is not good!" she rather understated.
Cyrus looked confused for a moment, blinking slowly at her, until the issue seemed to come to him in a flash of insight and he snorted, holding up his hands placatingly. “The marks, Asala. Not the people who bear them. Really, do you think I’d be this unconcerned if I believed two people, one of whom is my sister, could simply vanish afterwards?” He arched his brows, regarding her with a skeptical look.
Her answer was a flat "Oh." The blush was returning to her face at an alarming rate, and she could feel the heat from the flush to her cheeks. She didn't look to meet his eyes, rather, she stared off into an unremarkable part of the lake. "Well, um, that is, uh..." She said, clearly unable to find the words underneath all of her embarrassment. "So I should perhaps go prepare then, yes?" She asked, pointing back in the direction of Haven.
"I-I think so, yes," she said, attempting to make her way in the direction.
“You do that.” He spoke loud enough to be audible to her though she departed, and his amusement with the situation remained evident.
She turned and decided to cut through the side where there were more mages than templars. While she had nothing against the templars, they had a tendency to watch her as she walked, or at least, she felt like they did. She entertained thoughts that maybe it was just all in her head, but still. She was more comfortable among the mages. As she cut through, offered a wave to Donovan as she passed, as he seemed to be lecturing a group of mages. Once on the other side of the tents, she angled herself and headed toward the frozen lake.
From what she had gathered it was where Cyrus was last seen, and sure enough she eventually recognized his figure on the dock. She offered a wave as she approached.
He didn’t seem to see her at first, which was perhaps understandable. He was sitting crosslegged on the structure, an assortment of what looked like leather-bound books spread over his lap and the planks around him. He held a thin charcoal pencil in one hand, and was scribbling something onto a page about as fast as someone could write, by the looks of it. As she approached, Asala was able to see that all of the books were filled with the same writing, and it wasn’t really scribble at all—his penmanship seemed to default to an elegant, but somewhat minimal script. The book he was working in was filled more with numbers than letters, almost after the manner of a Qunari engineer.
The sound of her feet over the snow seemed to finally alert him to her approach, however, and he finished off the line he was writing on before turning his head in her direction. He blinked a few times, almost as if emerging from some kind of trance, and only then did he appear to actually properly register her presence: his eyes sharpened, and he half-smiled, a touch sly as usual.
“I do not believe we’re due for another lesson for a few hours yet. Don’t tell me you missed me.” That he was joking was obvious from the slight sarcastic edge to the words, as though he expected her attitude towards him to be rather the opposite.
"Uh... hm," she murmured as she shook her head in the negative. Then her eyes widened and she held her hands up submissively, fearing that she may have just accidently insulted. "N-n-not that you... I... it is just..." she stammered before closing her eyes and sighing. A blush was seeping into her features but the breath she took next seemed to ease her somewhat. She was aware of ridiculous she seemed at the moment, and the flush in her cheeks only deepened because of it. He laughed, a surprisingly understated thing for someone who didn’t seem to have any issues drawing all the attention in a room. His shoulders shook slightly with it, but there was no malice or condescension in his expression. Instead of continuing to stutter, she shook her head and tried to forge ahead.
She was frustrated with herself, and her cheeks puffed for a moment before she spoke, "It is just... there was nothing else for me t-to do." she said. They were caught up on their requisitions for potions. Injuries were also at a minimum, and nothing so severe as to require her attention. Aurora and Donovan were busy trying to instill some temperance into the mages, and Pierre had lessons from Larissa. She had nothing on schedule besides her own lesson later that day.
Asala's eyes fell onto the book that Cyrus was working on, and she tilted her head inquisitively. "What, uh, what are you working on?" she asked.
He glanced down at his work, almost as if surprised to see it there, but the impression quickly passed, and he gestured at her to sit down near him, moving a few of the other books around so as to make that possible. “Closing the Breach.” He shrugged, the way he said it making the whole thing sound like it was simple. The notes, though, gave the lie to that, rather obviously. “Magic is notoriously difficult to pin down in precise terms, but there are some things that can be quantified. The Qunari are actually better at it than almost anyone else. Perhaps because they are disposed to treat everything as a matter for mathematics.” He smoothed out the paper he’d just written on, tracing a finger down the edge of the page.
“While it’s hardly the whole story, it’s a valuable approach. Calculations like these were how Cassius and I figured out the trick to time magic.” He sounded distant, like he was remembering something, and ambivalent, like he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. He shook his head though, and glanced over at her from the corner of an eye.
“For now, it’s at least a preliminary approach. How has your dispelling practice been going?”
"It is... coming along," Asala admitted. While she was adept in healing and barriers, other forms of magic did not come as easily. She had very little formal training in the other types of magic, only what Aurora and the other mages could teach her while they traveled, and dispelling seemed counterintuitive, considering. Though she could fling simple small fire, ice, and lightning spells, they were nothing compared to what she witnessed Cyrus do on a regular basis.
She took a seat and looked at her hands for a moment. Asala then spread them apart and she concentrated, her brows furrowing in the effort. Soon her hands began to glow green and a green bubble formed in between them, but unlike her ordinary barrier spells, this one did not appear to be solid. Asala sighed as she stared at the dispel bubble. "It is hollow inside. It only dispels things that try to pass through, but magic is still able to work inside." An experiment with Estella revealed that.
Cyrus shifted gracefully up into a crouch, moving himself until he was perched on the edge of the dock in front of her, balance apparently not something he needed to worry about any more than a cat did. He cocked his head to the side, examining the shape of the spell with interest. “Hold the spell there.” He murmured it in a soft voice, a clear indication of his absorption. It was almost possible to see him thinking, his eyes lit with an almost childlike excitement at the prospect of an interesting puzzle to solve.
He moved his hands so that they were at the top and bottom of the sphere, perpendicular to her own, and then his hands began to glow softly blue. He touched the greenish magic between her hands, and a spark jumped around inside, like lightning contained in a ball. The corner of his mouth turned up. “Fascinating. Solid, and hollow. It seems barriers have seeped into your essence, Asala.” It was inflected with humor, but he didn’t seem to be entirely jesting.
His hands still in place, he moved his eyes from their hands to hers. “There’s no reason to change what works. Are you familiar with how to compress your barriers, make them as small as possible, and then expand them? If you can minimize the volume inside, and make sure your target is hit by the outer shell, it should work just the same as mine does. Here.” He half-rotated, so that he could point out towards a piece of driftwood stuck in the frozen lake. It lit on fire, bursting into a bright conflagration.
“It’s a large area, but not a strong version of the spell. Try banishing that.”
The spell between her hands fizzled out as Asala turned toward the fire. She frowned for a moment, quietly wishing the flame was closer to ward off the cold. Still, she held out her hands, palm outwards, as if she was trying to warm with with the distant fire. Soon, however, the familiar green glow enveloped her hands, and a tiny bright green sphere appeared in the middle of the flames. Her brows contorted and she bit the corner of her lip as she concentrated. It was different than controlling her ordinary barriers. Once she got a good feel of her sphere, she slowly began to move her hands apart.
Mimicking her motion, the barrier likewise began to grow in volume, at least until it grew to about a yard in diameter. Asala tried to hold the dispel barrier together, but it still began to twist and deform until it dispersed entirely. Though the dispel fizzled out, it still snuffed out a circle of flame in the wood, though its edges were still alight. "Wait, wait, wait," she bade eagerly, "I have an idea."
Her hands slipped into the green glow again, though this time instead of a sphere, the dispel manifested in flat square. Instead of trying to regulate its size, Asala simple swiped her hand, causing the square to wipe across the driftwood, extinguishing the fire wherever it touched. It took a pair of passes to get all of the flames, and by the end of it a film of sweat had worked itself onto her forehead, but her goal was accomplished. She turned back to Cyrus beaming with a wide smile on her lips.
Cyrus seemed to find this quite amusing, if the chuckling was anything to go by. He shook his head, grinning back at her. “Hardly the most efficient method, but remarkably creative, I’ll give you that.” Even when his laughter died away, his smile remained, and he waved a hand. “You know, it takes most people at least a month to make that much progress on this spell, and more to master it. If master is even the right word to use.” He rolled his eyes, some of the sharpness returning to his expression.
“When we close the Breach, I want you to direct the mages. We’ll need someone trustworthy holding both groups together, and the Commander can doubtless take care of the templars. Worst case scenario, you can channel whatever efforts the mages muster in the right direction, at least, with those barriers of yours.” He arched a brow, perhaps in anticipation of a protest.
"D-direct?" Asala sputtered, "What... what do you mean b-by direct?" she asked, the unsettling image of her standing in front of a formation of mages lingering in her mind.
He waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing too unsettling, I assure you. I will be asking them all to cast dispel magic at the same time, after the templars have cleansed the Breach to the best of their abilities. All you have to do is relay the signal to the rest and perform the spell also. Some of them are still edgy around the templars, and will doubtless be uncomfortable being so close to a mass cleanse. You’ll also all be ingesting some amount of lyrium beforehand to increase your efficacy, and some of them haven’t had any in a while. Might be a little jumpy, but a barrier should take care of any wayward spell residue, no?”
"Uh..." She was a comforted a bit, but still very clearly nervous about the whole idea. "I, uh, I s-suppose so..." She said, scratching under her horn. To be honest, she would probably be a little anxious after a mass cleanse too. She made a mental note to speak to Aurora afterward, but otherwise nodded, though reluctantly.
"What... uh, what will you be doing?" Asala asked curiously.
His smile widened, looking some strange mix of that innocent delight and something much more savvy. “I am going to be casting a very particular spell of my own devising. It should stabilize the Breach at its weakest point after all that disruption, and make it much easier for Stellulam and Romulus to close it.” He nodded down at the books still on the dock. “With a bit more work, I should also be able to modify it to more permanently steady their marks as well, which are bound to expand after what they do—assuming they do not disappear when the Breach does.” It seemed like he didn’t think they would, though the exact nature of his hypotheses was difficult to pin down. Cyrus wore a lot of expression openly on his face, but for all that his thoughts remained obscure.
"That is..." she began, but interrupted herself as she finally parsed everything he'd just said. "Wait, disappear? They could disappear? That is a possibility?" She asked, her eyes wide and the worry written clear on her face. "That... That is not good!" she rather understated.
Cyrus looked confused for a moment, blinking slowly at her, until the issue seemed to come to him in a flash of insight and he snorted, holding up his hands placatingly. “The marks, Asala. Not the people who bear them. Really, do you think I’d be this unconcerned if I believed two people, one of whom is my sister, could simply vanish afterwards?” He arched his brows, regarding her with a skeptical look.
Her answer was a flat "Oh." The blush was returning to her face at an alarming rate, and she could feel the heat from the flush to her cheeks. She didn't look to meet his eyes, rather, she stared off into an unremarkable part of the lake. "Well, um, that is, uh..." She said, clearly unable to find the words underneath all of her embarrassment. "So I should perhaps go prepare then, yes?" She asked, pointing back in the direction of Haven.
"I-I think so, yes," she said, attempting to make her way in the direction.
“You do that.” He spoke loud enough to be audible to her though she departed, and his amusement with the situation remained evident.