Autumn had turned Skyhold’s grounds a mix of brilliant red, bright yellow, and withered brown within a few short weeks, and the chill was definitely beginning to creep back into the air. Even now, in the early afternoon, there was a crisp bite to the atmosphere that necessitated a cloak, at least for Estella.
She stood off to one side of an empty practice ring—one of the nice things about being Inquisitor was that when you politely asked for one of them to be reserved for your use, you got to pick the time and date. So whoever would normally have been here had gone elsewhere, and the four of them had a wide circle of dirt, plus several practice implements and targets, to themselves.
She hadn’t asked for too many details when Romulus had requested the meeting, only arranged for both herself and her brother to be there. Apparently, Asala was also required, for she was present as well. Rubbing her bare hands together to generate some warmth, Estella glanced to Romulus, tilting her head marginally to the left.
“You mentioned something about the marks?”
"I did," Romulus replied, nodding. The chill was not the same as Haven's brutal winter cold yet, but that didn't stop the other Herald of Andraste from wearing an effective cloak over his gear. His beard had come in fully, something he'd been maintaining for a while, making him appear an altogether different man from the first days of the Inquisition.
He removed the glove from his marked hand, revealing it to be green and infused with magic as ever. "After the loss of Haven, I ended up in a cave with Khari, severely injured." The others had heard the rough outline of the story quite a few times, likely from several sources. The tale itself seemed to be twisting quickly, the remarkable survival of the Herald of Andraste, he who claimed her bloodline as his own. But Romulus himself spoke quite little of it, to all save a few.
"We were attacked by a Venatori patrol. I was too wounded to fight, so Khari fought alone. They'd almost overwhelmed her when I did... something, with my mark." He glanced at Cyrus, and then around at the training yard. "I created this... I guess it was a rift, but it was smaller. It pulled all of the Venatori into it, and nearly Khari as well. I don't know what happened to them."
He looked back to Cyrus. "I think these marks Estella and I have can do much more than close rifts, if we could learn how."
Cyrus rubbed absently at his jawline with his left hand. “That would make sense, considering that what they fundamentally do is disrupt or mend the Veil.” He hummed slightly, apparently to himself, looking upwards as though trying to recall something. “It would be worth caution, however, as the marks themselves can be more or less stable, as we well know.”
He tapped his fingers on his cheek a few times, the rhythm erratic. “Do you remember how it felt, when you did this? Can you describe it? That seems like the best place to begin.”
Romulus sat back on one of the fence posts that surrounded the little practice arena, thinking to himself. "I was... angry, I think. Frustrated, to have survived so much, only to be cornered and faced with death in a dark cave. Frustrated with my inability to help. Desperate." If anything the recollections of those emotions seemed to trouble him, as though the very feeling of them was something foreign that he'd only recently come into contact with.
He lifted his head again, glancing at Asala. "I thought that we might be able to practice more safely if you could contain anything we create. Keep it from growing dangerous enough to threaten any of us." He shrugged. "If we could do it at all, that is."
Asala glanced toward Cyrus for a moment, before she then looked around them, inspecting the area Romulus chose before she nodded in agreement. “I think I can do that,” she said.
Estella was quite sure that she was superfluous to this experiment—her mark had never shown a sign of being able to do anything of the sort Romulus described. And truthfully, she existed in a near-constant state of desperation and frustration in any fight. Anything she knew about magic, her brother knew better, but she supposed it would be best for her to remain here anyway. If only because she’d been asked.
“Some spells work best from certain frames of mind,” she volunteered, glancing at Cyrus and lifting her shoulders in a half-shrug. “Um… obviously we can’t really make you feel the same desperation and such here, but maybe if you focused on remembering it? Tried to recreate the conditions as much as possible?”
It was the best guess she had, anyway.
“A charmingly-organic solution.” Cyrus smiled, though it was impossible to read the valence of the expression. “And perhaps the least-risky, if it works. Alternatively, I can attempt to apply a variety of magical effects to the mark itself, in hopes of triggering the same a bit more… directly.”
Asala seemed uneasy with idea of magically tinkering with the marks, betrayed by her nervous tick of scratching at the spot under her horn. However, if she had any reservations, she did not voice them.
He crossed his arms, though it didn’t seem defensive. “The fact is, whether your emotions precipitated it or not, the mark would not have acted differently without some change in it. I am confident that I can alter it, but it might take a few tries before I find the right…” He paused, tapping the fingers of his left hand on his elbow. “…setting, if you like. And the results in the meantime could be—how should I say?—volatile.”
He did not seem at all perturbed by this. On the contrary, the coiled tension in his body language was an obvious indicator of enthusiasm.
Asala sighed. “Perhaps we should try to ensure that they do not become... too volatile, yes?” Immediately after, she reached into the satchel at her side and peeked inside, most likely inspecting her reserve of supplies. She never seemed to go anywhere without them.
Romulus flexed his marked hand several times, opening and closing the fist. He made no comment on the volatility of their potential exercise, instead simply holding out his hand, palm faced towards the ground in the center of all of them. A moment passed in silence, during which a few not-so-subtle Inquisition soldiers stopped to watch from afar. The practice ring wasn't all that isolated, after all.
His face passed through varying stages of focus as he either tried to will or force the effect to emerge from his hand. In the end, little happened other than a barely perceivable change in the brightness of his palm, something that could be just as easily attributed to the shifting light from the partly clouded skies. Romulus frowned.
"I should think a mage would have an easier time of this. If what we're doing is calling on the Fade, or bringing it forward." His eyes shifted between Estella and Cyrus.
Cyrus, too, moved his gaze to Estella. “Stellulam?”
She wanted to protest. She wasn’t really a mage, after all. Not in any way that mattered. She certainly hadn’t ever been able to make her mark do anything like that before, and she went into battle desperate every time, knowing that even one mistake could be fatal—and knowing she was likely to make more than one. Still…
Estella sighed. “I… all right. I can try.”
She moved to the center of the field, mindful of the fact that they were being watched. It would be just like her to do something disastrous right now. “I… don’t really trust my luck. Asala, if you could shield us?”
Asala nodded and lifted her hands. A blue aura formed over them, but they did not appear to create a barrier, at least, not immediately. She seemed content to wait until they were necessary.
Feeling quite foolish, Estella looked down at the mark on her right palm, frowning at the green glow emanating from the spot. Holding it out away from her body and facing up, she gripped her forearm with her other hand for extra stability, just in case. “Um… I’m going to try something kind of elemental first, I guess.” It was the magic she was most familiar with, after all.
Estella visualized her magic as threads. Tangled, tenuous, and not very strong—it seemed to fit. Each spell was an attempt to tease one of those threads out and make it do something in particular. In this case, she imagined it creating a small flame, trying to direct the spell through the mark.
Unfortunately, the moment the two made contact, things went very wrong. With a loud bang, the mark surged, a plume of smoke blooming in the air over her hand. Multicolored sparks flew in all directions, and a concussive blast threw Estella several feet backwards. She landed on her rear, jarring her spine. Her palm stung; she shook it several times, grimacing. More than pain, though, she could feel embarrassment welling in her chest.
“So… not that, then.” She turned her eyes to her brother. “Maybe it’s better if you do this. You can use mine.”
Volatile or not, she trusted him.
Cyrus, uncrossing his arms, reached down with one of them to help Estella to her feet. She grasped it gratefully and stood. “Elemental, you said? Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but you might be on to something. Still, it has to be something inherent in the mark itself, or Romulus here wouldn’t have been able to make it happen.”
He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment before turning his attention to Asala. “If you would be so kind as to put one of those barriers up now, I’d rather take fewer chances.” His face split into a lopsided smile. “Laboratory safety, and all that.”
After she had gotten over the initial shock of Estella being thrown backward, Asala reset her open mouth and nodded at Cyrus's request. Her brows knitted as she focused, and the aura around her hands intensified. A light blue bubble slowly built itself up around them, and once it closed she paused for another moment before she spoke.
“It is up.”
Estella dragged her eyes from their new ceiling and swallowed. Well, hopefully that would contain any possible damage, anyway. She turned over the hand that was still in Cyrus’s own, giving him access to the mark without reservation. “Have at it, I guess.”
The fingers of her brother’s right hand were steady on the back of her left, and he peered down at the mark with evident interest. “Remind me to stabilize this for you—both of you. I figured out a better way to do that.”
Using his grip to rotate her hand, he pointed the mark outwards, away from both of them and the others in the ring. For a few moments, there was nothing at all, and then a strange sensation built in the mark itself. At first, it was akin to an itch or tingle. Cyrus still stared at her hand, a furrow etched deep into his brow. With each second that passed, the sensation increased in intensity—just before it became pain, however, it stopped.
Cyrus’s head jerked to the side; right where his eyes landed, a crack appeared in the air. It was only a thin one, but against the blue backdrop of Asala’s dome, plainly visible.
“Now, now. Let’s not stop there…” The words were barely even loud enough to qualify as muttering.
Something in the mark shifted again in response. The crack shuddered, and with an earsplitting screech, grew, until it was the length and width of her arm. From… whatever was on the other side issued a green light, not unlike the mark itself.
“Now that’s quite something.” Cyrus released Estella’s hand, moving closer to the fissure in the air. “I don’t suppose anyone has a small object they don’t mind sacrificing for the cause?”
He shifted his whole body so as to see the other side of… the thing the mark had created. Judging from the expression on his face, he’d found something to occupy his studies for at least the next few days or so.
“Um...” Asala murmured likely to get their attention. While her hand was still awash in the blue aura, she reached toward her ear, and one of the iron hoops that pierced it. She fiddled with it for a moment until it finally came free. She held in her palm for a moment before she looked back up to the rift. “Do you, uh... Do you just want me to throw it in?” Asala asked.
Cyrus shrugged. “Go ahead. If there’s no explosion, we can progress to trying to poke it with sticks.” His tone suggested that he wasn’t completely serious in his characterization—but he seemed to mean it literally enough.
“... I hope they are very long sticks,” Asala replied, taking Cyrus's comment completely at face value. After she spoke, she took one long glance at the earring in her hand before tossing it into the rift. It passed through the fissure, but did not pass through on to the other side. It appeared as if it went into the rift, and went... elsewhere. It certainly wasn't present any longer. Asala tilted her head, her face furrowed as if she expected something else to happen, but when nothing did, she relaxed.
Romulus waited patiently as well, and when nothing occurred, he looked to Estella, obviously pleased. "I think you've done it. More than I could do, at any rate."
Estella smiled thinly at him. Whatever had just happened, she could hardly be considered the responsible party. She barely understood what Cyrus had done—maybe she’d be able to get a better handle on it if he explained, but even that was far different from being able to do it by herself.
Still… she took a few steps closer to the disturbance. It didn’t look like the typical rift; there were no shifting crystals, but the green light was the same. Frowning, Estella slid her sword from her belt and separated the blade from the sheath. “Where do you think it goes?”
From the way Asala’s earring had disappeared, it had to go somewhere, right? Edging closer, she held out the constellation-patterned sheath from the very end, slowly walking it forward until it came in contact with the green light. The next step forward after that met no resistance, like it was just more air, but the light swallowed it. Knitting her brows, Estella pulled it back. Completely intact—not even a scratch. “I… think it’s safe?” Or at least not deadly by touch alone, anyway.
“Brilliant.” Cyrus sounded more like he was talking to himself than any of them. “It’s certainly more stable than a rift. I think… yes. I can make use of this. If you’ll leave it here for a few hours, I can take some measurements…” he trailed off, obviously already planning on doing just that.
Estella knew the look. “Best leave him to it,” she advised. “I’ll close it up when he’s done.” Moving to the fence, she hauled herself up onto the upper rail.
This might be a while.
She stood off to one side of an empty practice ring—one of the nice things about being Inquisitor was that when you politely asked for one of them to be reserved for your use, you got to pick the time and date. So whoever would normally have been here had gone elsewhere, and the four of them had a wide circle of dirt, plus several practice implements and targets, to themselves.
She hadn’t asked for too many details when Romulus had requested the meeting, only arranged for both herself and her brother to be there. Apparently, Asala was also required, for she was present as well. Rubbing her bare hands together to generate some warmth, Estella glanced to Romulus, tilting her head marginally to the left.
“You mentioned something about the marks?”
"I did," Romulus replied, nodding. The chill was not the same as Haven's brutal winter cold yet, but that didn't stop the other Herald of Andraste from wearing an effective cloak over his gear. His beard had come in fully, something he'd been maintaining for a while, making him appear an altogether different man from the first days of the Inquisition.
He removed the glove from his marked hand, revealing it to be green and infused with magic as ever. "After the loss of Haven, I ended up in a cave with Khari, severely injured." The others had heard the rough outline of the story quite a few times, likely from several sources. The tale itself seemed to be twisting quickly, the remarkable survival of the Herald of Andraste, he who claimed her bloodline as his own. But Romulus himself spoke quite little of it, to all save a few.
"We were attacked by a Venatori patrol. I was too wounded to fight, so Khari fought alone. They'd almost overwhelmed her when I did... something, with my mark." He glanced at Cyrus, and then around at the training yard. "I created this... I guess it was a rift, but it was smaller. It pulled all of the Venatori into it, and nearly Khari as well. I don't know what happened to them."
He looked back to Cyrus. "I think these marks Estella and I have can do much more than close rifts, if we could learn how."
Cyrus rubbed absently at his jawline with his left hand. “That would make sense, considering that what they fundamentally do is disrupt or mend the Veil.” He hummed slightly, apparently to himself, looking upwards as though trying to recall something. “It would be worth caution, however, as the marks themselves can be more or less stable, as we well know.”
He tapped his fingers on his cheek a few times, the rhythm erratic. “Do you remember how it felt, when you did this? Can you describe it? That seems like the best place to begin.”
Romulus sat back on one of the fence posts that surrounded the little practice arena, thinking to himself. "I was... angry, I think. Frustrated, to have survived so much, only to be cornered and faced with death in a dark cave. Frustrated with my inability to help. Desperate." If anything the recollections of those emotions seemed to trouble him, as though the very feeling of them was something foreign that he'd only recently come into contact with.
He lifted his head again, glancing at Asala. "I thought that we might be able to practice more safely if you could contain anything we create. Keep it from growing dangerous enough to threaten any of us." He shrugged. "If we could do it at all, that is."
Asala glanced toward Cyrus for a moment, before she then looked around them, inspecting the area Romulus chose before she nodded in agreement. “I think I can do that,” she said.
Estella was quite sure that she was superfluous to this experiment—her mark had never shown a sign of being able to do anything of the sort Romulus described. And truthfully, she existed in a near-constant state of desperation and frustration in any fight. Anything she knew about magic, her brother knew better, but she supposed it would be best for her to remain here anyway. If only because she’d been asked.
“Some spells work best from certain frames of mind,” she volunteered, glancing at Cyrus and lifting her shoulders in a half-shrug. “Um… obviously we can’t really make you feel the same desperation and such here, but maybe if you focused on remembering it? Tried to recreate the conditions as much as possible?”
It was the best guess she had, anyway.
“A charmingly-organic solution.” Cyrus smiled, though it was impossible to read the valence of the expression. “And perhaps the least-risky, if it works. Alternatively, I can attempt to apply a variety of magical effects to the mark itself, in hopes of triggering the same a bit more… directly.”
Asala seemed uneasy with idea of magically tinkering with the marks, betrayed by her nervous tick of scratching at the spot under her horn. However, if she had any reservations, she did not voice them.
He crossed his arms, though it didn’t seem defensive. “The fact is, whether your emotions precipitated it or not, the mark would not have acted differently without some change in it. I am confident that I can alter it, but it might take a few tries before I find the right…” He paused, tapping the fingers of his left hand on his elbow. “…setting, if you like. And the results in the meantime could be—how should I say?—volatile.”
He did not seem at all perturbed by this. On the contrary, the coiled tension in his body language was an obvious indicator of enthusiasm.
Asala sighed. “Perhaps we should try to ensure that they do not become... too volatile, yes?” Immediately after, she reached into the satchel at her side and peeked inside, most likely inspecting her reserve of supplies. She never seemed to go anywhere without them.
Romulus flexed his marked hand several times, opening and closing the fist. He made no comment on the volatility of their potential exercise, instead simply holding out his hand, palm faced towards the ground in the center of all of them. A moment passed in silence, during which a few not-so-subtle Inquisition soldiers stopped to watch from afar. The practice ring wasn't all that isolated, after all.
His face passed through varying stages of focus as he either tried to will or force the effect to emerge from his hand. In the end, little happened other than a barely perceivable change in the brightness of his palm, something that could be just as easily attributed to the shifting light from the partly clouded skies. Romulus frowned.
"I should think a mage would have an easier time of this. If what we're doing is calling on the Fade, or bringing it forward." His eyes shifted between Estella and Cyrus.
Cyrus, too, moved his gaze to Estella. “Stellulam?”
She wanted to protest. She wasn’t really a mage, after all. Not in any way that mattered. She certainly hadn’t ever been able to make her mark do anything like that before, and she went into battle desperate every time, knowing that even one mistake could be fatal—and knowing she was likely to make more than one. Still…
Estella sighed. “I… all right. I can try.”
She moved to the center of the field, mindful of the fact that they were being watched. It would be just like her to do something disastrous right now. “I… don’t really trust my luck. Asala, if you could shield us?”
Asala nodded and lifted her hands. A blue aura formed over them, but they did not appear to create a barrier, at least, not immediately. She seemed content to wait until they were necessary.
Feeling quite foolish, Estella looked down at the mark on her right palm, frowning at the green glow emanating from the spot. Holding it out away from her body and facing up, she gripped her forearm with her other hand for extra stability, just in case. “Um… I’m going to try something kind of elemental first, I guess.” It was the magic she was most familiar with, after all.
Estella visualized her magic as threads. Tangled, tenuous, and not very strong—it seemed to fit. Each spell was an attempt to tease one of those threads out and make it do something in particular. In this case, she imagined it creating a small flame, trying to direct the spell through the mark.
Unfortunately, the moment the two made contact, things went very wrong. With a loud bang, the mark surged, a plume of smoke blooming in the air over her hand. Multicolored sparks flew in all directions, and a concussive blast threw Estella several feet backwards. She landed on her rear, jarring her spine. Her palm stung; she shook it several times, grimacing. More than pain, though, she could feel embarrassment welling in her chest.
“So… not that, then.” She turned her eyes to her brother. “Maybe it’s better if you do this. You can use mine.”
Volatile or not, she trusted him.
Cyrus, uncrossing his arms, reached down with one of them to help Estella to her feet. She grasped it gratefully and stood. “Elemental, you said? Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but you might be on to something. Still, it has to be something inherent in the mark itself, or Romulus here wouldn’t have been able to make it happen.”
He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment before turning his attention to Asala. “If you would be so kind as to put one of those barriers up now, I’d rather take fewer chances.” His face split into a lopsided smile. “Laboratory safety, and all that.”
After she had gotten over the initial shock of Estella being thrown backward, Asala reset her open mouth and nodded at Cyrus's request. Her brows knitted as she focused, and the aura around her hands intensified. A light blue bubble slowly built itself up around them, and once it closed she paused for another moment before she spoke.
“It is up.”
Estella dragged her eyes from their new ceiling and swallowed. Well, hopefully that would contain any possible damage, anyway. She turned over the hand that was still in Cyrus’s own, giving him access to the mark without reservation. “Have at it, I guess.”
The fingers of her brother’s right hand were steady on the back of her left, and he peered down at the mark with evident interest. “Remind me to stabilize this for you—both of you. I figured out a better way to do that.”
Using his grip to rotate her hand, he pointed the mark outwards, away from both of them and the others in the ring. For a few moments, there was nothing at all, and then a strange sensation built in the mark itself. At first, it was akin to an itch or tingle. Cyrus still stared at her hand, a furrow etched deep into his brow. With each second that passed, the sensation increased in intensity—just before it became pain, however, it stopped.
Cyrus’s head jerked to the side; right where his eyes landed, a crack appeared in the air. It was only a thin one, but against the blue backdrop of Asala’s dome, plainly visible.
“Now, now. Let’s not stop there…” The words were barely even loud enough to qualify as muttering.
Something in the mark shifted again in response. The crack shuddered, and with an earsplitting screech, grew, until it was the length and width of her arm. From… whatever was on the other side issued a green light, not unlike the mark itself.
“Now that’s quite something.” Cyrus released Estella’s hand, moving closer to the fissure in the air. “I don’t suppose anyone has a small object they don’t mind sacrificing for the cause?”
He shifted his whole body so as to see the other side of… the thing the mark had created. Judging from the expression on his face, he’d found something to occupy his studies for at least the next few days or so.
“Um...” Asala murmured likely to get their attention. While her hand was still awash in the blue aura, she reached toward her ear, and one of the iron hoops that pierced it. She fiddled with it for a moment until it finally came free. She held in her palm for a moment before she looked back up to the rift. “Do you, uh... Do you just want me to throw it in?” Asala asked.
Cyrus shrugged. “Go ahead. If there’s no explosion, we can progress to trying to poke it with sticks.” His tone suggested that he wasn’t completely serious in his characterization—but he seemed to mean it literally enough.
“... I hope they are very long sticks,” Asala replied, taking Cyrus's comment completely at face value. After she spoke, she took one long glance at the earring in her hand before tossing it into the rift. It passed through the fissure, but did not pass through on to the other side. It appeared as if it went into the rift, and went... elsewhere. It certainly wasn't present any longer. Asala tilted her head, her face furrowed as if she expected something else to happen, but when nothing did, she relaxed.
Romulus waited patiently as well, and when nothing occurred, he looked to Estella, obviously pleased. "I think you've done it. More than I could do, at any rate."
Estella smiled thinly at him. Whatever had just happened, she could hardly be considered the responsible party. She barely understood what Cyrus had done—maybe she’d be able to get a better handle on it if he explained, but even that was far different from being able to do it by herself.
Still… she took a few steps closer to the disturbance. It didn’t look like the typical rift; there were no shifting crystals, but the green light was the same. Frowning, Estella slid her sword from her belt and separated the blade from the sheath. “Where do you think it goes?”
From the way Asala’s earring had disappeared, it had to go somewhere, right? Edging closer, she held out the constellation-patterned sheath from the very end, slowly walking it forward until it came in contact with the green light. The next step forward after that met no resistance, like it was just more air, but the light swallowed it. Knitting her brows, Estella pulled it back. Completely intact—not even a scratch. “I… think it’s safe?” Or at least not deadly by touch alone, anyway.
“Brilliant.” Cyrus sounded more like he was talking to himself than any of them. “It’s certainly more stable than a rift. I think… yes. I can make use of this. If you’ll leave it here for a few hours, I can take some measurements…” he trailed off, obviously already planning on doing just that.
Estella knew the look. “Best leave him to it,” she advised. “I’ll close it up when he’s done.” Moving to the fence, she hauled herself up onto the upper rail.
This might be a while.