After Estella and the rest of her traveling partners had resolved the issues in Crestwood, word reached the Inquisition that they had captured a fort and required additional personnel to man it. Asala was among the number of other Inquisition forces to be sent to the fort, though she had volunteered with the other irregulars. In part because she wanted to see more of the world than the inside of Skyhold, though mostly because her friends were either going as well, or were already there-- and having a healer on hand would only benefit them. There was enough medical personnel back in Skyhold that they wouldn't miss her too terribly. Donovan and Millian could easily handle what injuries arose on the homefront.
The trek had thankfully been shorter than it had been to the Approach, though the weather in the area was worse in her opinion. Fortunately, the rain had let up some since they arrived, and the sun was finally peeking out behind the clouds. Which was fortunate, because she had some ideas she wanted to test out today. She had already found Cyrus and Estella, as well as Vesryn, but he was accompanied by his Dalish acquaintances. Having strangers watch her experiment with her magic felt... odd, but it was something she felt like she needed to do, if she was to ever progress in the use of her magic.
They were all positioned some distance away from the fort in a flat area, though its silhouette lingered behind them. She had also deigned to bring a small portable table with her, which a pair of books sat on. One could easily be recognized as one of the tomes Cyrus had transcribed for her, but the other was more of a journal, notes written in her own neat handwriting. "Are you sure you are okay with this?" Asala asked Vesryn. The spell she had intended to test should have been in no way dangerous, but regardless, she wanted to make sure he was okay with it before she proceeded.
"Me?" Vesryn asked. "I'm not actually sure what we're attempting here. Should I be okay with this?"
"I have some experience observing rather... unstable practice sessions," the one who'd introduced himself as Zeth informed her, glancing at his sister. She looked a bit embarrassed by the reference, but made no comment of it. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be fine."
"Oh, no, no, no. It should not be unstable," she quickly amended. she scratched a spot underneath her horn and decided that maybe a bit of explanation was in order. Maybe she should have done that before she called them out there. "I, well. See, uh..." she began stuttering, before she abruptly stopped herself. She let a moment of annoyance at herself pass before she sighed and tried again, this time forming the words in her head before trying to speak them. "The barriers I use now are a... sort of continuous spell-- or, I have to supply a steady amount of mana for it to keep its shape," she said, glancing at Cyrus to ensure she was explaining it right.
Glancing at the tome on the table nearby, she continued. "I have read of barriers that are... static, I suppose, where I supply a set amount of mana and they will linger until it has used it all, or is destroyed. I wished... to see if I could wrap one of these barriers around an individual-- er, you. In this case." She said.
“Well, there is a slight risk of suffocation, but I'm sure everything will be fine." Cyrus said it with a clearly-teasing tone, the slight frown he'd been wearing up until that point disappearing.
"Ah." Vesryn smiled a bit. He seemed to take the news quite well. "Sure, why not? Perhaps I should find some space then." He took a few steps away from his Dalish friends.
"Oh no, I--I, uh, I have tested it on candles," she quickly explained. "I fixed the airflow problem."
With everything prepared and no more questions, Asala began to prep the spell. It was not unlike her usual barrier spell, though she had to worry about the flexibility of it as well as create something static. She had practiced it with small scale usage, and she was able to work out how to feed it a set amount of mana, though she did not yet test it on larger subjects. Leon would have been a prime test, for if she could wrap him in a suitable barrier, than theoretically she could do the same to anyone of the Inquisition. However, Vesryn was also a suitable applicant.
She held her wrist with her other hand and summoned the spell to the fore. A dull thump sounded around Vesryn, the ground below him alighting in magic for a moment before it faded, leaving him encased in a shimmering blue barrier. The light from her hand faded as well, but the barrier remained signaling that the shield was now independent from Asala's control. "Can you move?" she asked, tentatively.
"Uh..." Vesryn looked immediately a bit uncomfortable, glancing down at himself perhaps to try to take a proper stock of what exactly Asala had done. "I'm not sure that's the most pertinent question." He could move, a little, but it seemed as though he had to strain just to get a small step forward, or raise his arms up from his sides. A bit like he was moving in one of those time-warped rifts they had encountered around Redcliffe.
"Am I supposed to be able to fight after you've cast this?" It seemed to be a genuine question. The barrier would certainly protect him for as long as it lasted, but with how little he was able to move, it would essentially offer any enemy free hits on him until it was destroyed. "I can breathe, at least."
Astraia laughed a little at that, and Zeth grinned at his friend's predicament as well.
"Actually... Yes," Asala answered, rather embarrassed before she glanced at Cyrus.
He was smiling as well, but as soon as she looked at him, it softened slightly. A few green sparks flickered in one of his hands; he flung them at Vesryn and dissipated the shield with minimal fanfare. “Pliability is still an issue, certainly." He raised a hand to his chin, rubbing at this jawline and rocking back on his heels. “You could try to make the entire thing elastic enough, but I suspect it would lose much of its strength if you did. I think you might have more success modeling it after actual armor."
Cyrus nodded at Vesryn. “As I'm sure you can see, there are parts of platemail that are as unyielding as you like, and other parts where it has to be jointed enough to accommodate movement. I recommend studying the anatomy of as many suits of armor as you can get your hands on, then trying to replicate one at a time. Perhaps ask the Commander to let you try and protect his arms while he pummels things, for example."
He patted her on the shoulder, though, in what was likely meant to be a reassuring fashion. “That you've made it even this far yet is excellent progress. Perhaps you would like to try making someone just a chestplate or a gauntlet and see how it works on a smaller scale?"
“You can try that on me, if you like," Estella added. “Maybe not the right arm, in case that interferes with something, but the left?" She readily extended it towards Asala, seemingly with no reservations at all about being a magical test subject.
"Of course," Asala asked cheerfully. The earlier set back didn't bother her much--that was the point her asking them all to accompany her. It was an experiment of sorts, and she was not expecting it to be immediately perfect. Though, she did linger on Vesryn's armor for a moment more. She would have to ask him, as well as Leon and a number of others to allow her to inspect their armor and the way they move in it. It seemed like a lot of work-- but she wasn't discouraged. In fact, she was excited by the prospect and emboldened by the progress.
She turned toward Estella and focused on the gauntlet, taking it into her own hand and took into account the tweaks Cyrus had mentioned. She noted the joints of the fingers and the slight bend to the its shape. Still holding it, Asala began to cast the spell. Just like with Vesryn, the spell produced a glow and when it faded a barrier was wrapped around Estella's hand. Of course, she had proved to be hasty in her casting, and she was caught in her own slight area of affect. In addition to Estella's gauntlet, her own hands were encased in matching barriers.
"Uh..." she said as she held them up. Regardless, she began to test the fingers of her own hand. "How... is it for you?" she asked Estella.
The Inquisitor tried to flex her fingers, from the look of it. Two of them moved a little, but the others remained more or less motionless. “Well, I'm not as strong as other people," Estella said, “but I'd have trouble gripping my sword, still." She lifted her shoulders, smiling good-naturedly.
"It is... certainly a work in progress," Asala agreed with a smile of her own. The barriers around her hands were much of the same way, her index and middle fingers flexing more easily than the rest, but even those had some rigidity in them. She glanced toward Cyrus with her best "I tried" smile she could muster. "Um.. help?" she asked, holding her hands up for her to dispel.
He huffed softly, but the spell was not long in coming, sloughing the barriers away from both her hands and Estella's. “Fine developments for now, certainly." He diverted his attention to their onlookers momentarily, tilting his head a bit. “While we're all working on our magic together, perhaps one of our guest mages would like to participate? Astraia, maybe? Your stonefist is quite impressive, if memory serves."
She smiled, fingers tightening a bit around her staff. "Thank you. It's a simple spell, though. I can't do it as powerfully as that if I don't have time to gather it together." Behind them a fair distance, the other elf, Shae, stood from the rock she was sitting on. She continued to watch, arms crossed. Astraia glanced briefly to her brother, and then back to Cyrus. "The weapons you made, from the Fade. That was also very impressive."
Cyrus inclined his head politely. “Thank you. I've been fortunate enough to have more than one excellent teacher." Something crossed his face for a moment at that, unreadable, but it disappeared a moment later. “Is primal magic your preferred school, then? I confess to a fondness for it myself. Perhaps some target practice would be in order for us."
She nodded enthusiastically. "Spirit, too, but yes, I seem to have the easiest time with rock and lightning. I, uh... I know I'm not very accurate. I should practice more." Her glance at Estella was almost too quick to notice before she looked away again, blinking a few times. "I was working on a petrify spell before we left the Tirashan."
"She's almost got it, too," Zeth pointed out. "Though more often than not I think the subject would end up crushed rather than encased. Which works fine in a battle."
"I want to be able to trap them without killing them," she offered, a bit meekly.
Asala smiled when she heard that and nodded gingerly. "I understand completely." Her own barriers were meant to protect instead of hurt, after all.
“Then let's try it." Cyrus accepted this with equanimity, though his glance darted to Zethlasan for a moment before resettling on Astraia. “You can petrify me. I promise not to be crushable." What looked to be several layers of arcane shielding rippled over the air in front of him. He didn't conform them to his body, as Asala had been attempting, but they were very close while maintaining their general shape.
He stepped well away from the others, allowing plenty of room for her to aim without worrying about anyone else. To Asala, this wasn't really anything unusual; he often volunteered to be the target of things she tried as well, when he wasn't needed for some other purpose, like dispelling. Perhaps it was just something that happened when you had spells that needed living targets.
To Astraia, however, this was obviously quite new, and she looked quite alarmed for several seconds, looking at Cyrus as though he was a bit mad. Though she obviously tried to hide that expression as well. "What? Petrify you? I... I've only ever tried on—on tree branches, or old bones, or other rocks. I shouldn't."
Zeth put a hand on her shoulder. "The rocks didn't have layers of arcane shields and barrier wielding mages nearby, sister. It'll be fine."
She appeared quite unconvinced that it would be, though she obviously wasn't sure who to look for in her search for reassurance. Or permission, perhaps. Finally she sought out Estella, eyes flicking between her and Cyrus. "I shouldn't."
Estella actually looked, of all things, a bit amused. Apparently, she was quite confident in Cyrus's ability not to get himself killed by wayward spell. “Actually... he does this sort of thing a lot. You don't have to if you don't want to, of course, but if Cy says it won't hurt him, I'm confident it won't."
That seemed to be the encouragement she needed, though she looked surprised that she was actually going to attempt this. Stepping away from her brother a pace to give herself some room, she lowered her staff towards Cyrus, though she carried it in one hand, leaving the other empty, fingers extending down towards the earth beneath her. Her eyes sought the ground Cyrus stood upon, and slowly at first she began to pull on the Fade, bits of brown colored stone swirling around her hands and staff.
She then lifted her hands up, the staff with it. From all sides of Cyrus appeared mounds of fractured stone, starting out perhaps a little farther than they should have. They smashed loudly into him on four different fronts with impressive force, enough that they ended up just shattering themselves, sending chunks of rock flying in every direction. Cyrus only disappeared for a moment, and indeed was fine when he reappeared, though Astraia only managed to notice that once she was willing to look at what she'd done.
Zethlasan tilted his head, pointer finger resting on his chin. "Mm. Close."
Cyrus doubled over, coughing out of what seemed to be some combination of the stone dust and dirt in the air and the actual impact of the slabs of earth against this shields and his person. Slapping his knee a few times, he straightened, the side of a fist pressed to the center of his chest. He was covered in dirt, some of it more like mud considering the weather lately, but he didn't seem upset.
Quite the contrary, as soon as he got the air back for it, he was laughing, a low chuckle that trailed off into an exaggerated sigh. “Now that was a spell." Both his hands raked through his hair, pushing the dark mass back away from his face and over his crown. Face mud-streaked, he grinned nevertheless. “And quite close to what you wanted, I think. It might be that you're surging a bit with the magic on release. If you can stop doing that and release softly instead, I think you'll have a bloody effective trap on your hands."
Apparently her brother's boyish grin and mucked-up appearance was enough to get the Inquisitor laughing, too, because she did, wrapping one arm around her middle as though to hold herself together. “You look like... oh, Cy, you're a mess." Her other hand lifted to her mouth, smothering the giggles she was still holding in.
"I'm sorry!" Astraia immediately said, though any worry she actually had seemed to be overridden by the way they were grinning and laughing. A smile worked its way onto her face as well. Probably a guilty one, but it didn't leave. At least, not until she seemed to become thoughtful. "Soft release," she repeated to herself. "Okay. Thank you."
Asala covered her mouth with her hand in shock. The spell was more... vigorous than she initially believed it would be. She had summoned a barrier in the nick of time to avoid being pelted by debris from the shattering stone. She felt for the poor woman, to have such unbridled power but a disdain for causing pain. Eventually, even Asala began to chuckle with the others. Soon, she calmed enough to finally speak to Astraia. "You will get better, you just need to practice," she said with a comforting smile.
Clapping his hands together, Cyrus rubbed his palms a bit, bouncing on his toes with an almost-childlike excitement. “All right. What's next? Anything else anyone would like to try? Asala? Stellulam?"
Estella shook her head, waving a hand. She was still smiling broadly though, something she did not often seem to do. “Not me, thanks. I'll leave the mad experiments to the rest of you."
"Actually..." Asala began, thinking on it for a moment. "There is one more thing I wish to try." She scanned the immediate area for a clear enough path away from the others, and once she found a spot she turned back to Cyrus. "Uh... ready?" she asked, her nerves seeping into her voice. She hadn't told Cyrus about this one...
She turned her head toward direction she wanted to go and slipped into the fade, cloaking herself in it. Keeping in mind how Cyrus does it, she looked ahead toward the spot she wished to go and stepped, flashing through the fade. Excitement and adrenaline gripped her as she shot across the distance, but about midway through something began to feel... off. Her path carried herself about halfway to her destination before she fell out of it, falling forward and having the momentum sling her through the mud and dirt a few feet before she finally stopped. Immediately she was up and gasping for breath, but between them she managed to relay, "I am fine! I am fine, I promise," before coughing some dirt out of her lungs.
Eventually, she managed to make it to a stand, and brushed as much dirt off of herself as she could-- but the mud stayed. She could feel it on her face, not unlike Cyrus a moment ago. "The... stopping is always the difficult part," she explained, with a rather meek laugh.
“Here's a true story for you: I overshot that spell the first time I used it. Slammed into a tree coming out of it and broke my arm. Couldn't do anything with it for a week, with healers." Cyrus was still grinning—he might have been struggling to contain more laughter, though it wasn't quite possible to tell. “I'd say that wasn't a bad try, by comparison."
The trek had thankfully been shorter than it had been to the Approach, though the weather in the area was worse in her opinion. Fortunately, the rain had let up some since they arrived, and the sun was finally peeking out behind the clouds. Which was fortunate, because she had some ideas she wanted to test out today. She had already found Cyrus and Estella, as well as Vesryn, but he was accompanied by his Dalish acquaintances. Having strangers watch her experiment with her magic felt... odd, but it was something she felt like she needed to do, if she was to ever progress in the use of her magic.
They were all positioned some distance away from the fort in a flat area, though its silhouette lingered behind them. She had also deigned to bring a small portable table with her, which a pair of books sat on. One could easily be recognized as one of the tomes Cyrus had transcribed for her, but the other was more of a journal, notes written in her own neat handwriting. "Are you sure you are okay with this?" Asala asked Vesryn. The spell she had intended to test should have been in no way dangerous, but regardless, she wanted to make sure he was okay with it before she proceeded.
"Me?" Vesryn asked. "I'm not actually sure what we're attempting here. Should I be okay with this?"
"I have some experience observing rather... unstable practice sessions," the one who'd introduced himself as Zeth informed her, glancing at his sister. She looked a bit embarrassed by the reference, but made no comment of it. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be fine."
"Oh, no, no, no. It should not be unstable," she quickly amended. she scratched a spot underneath her horn and decided that maybe a bit of explanation was in order. Maybe she should have done that before she called them out there. "I, well. See, uh..." she began stuttering, before she abruptly stopped herself. She let a moment of annoyance at herself pass before she sighed and tried again, this time forming the words in her head before trying to speak them. "The barriers I use now are a... sort of continuous spell-- or, I have to supply a steady amount of mana for it to keep its shape," she said, glancing at Cyrus to ensure she was explaining it right.
Glancing at the tome on the table nearby, she continued. "I have read of barriers that are... static, I suppose, where I supply a set amount of mana and they will linger until it has used it all, or is destroyed. I wished... to see if I could wrap one of these barriers around an individual-- er, you. In this case." She said.
“Well, there is a slight risk of suffocation, but I'm sure everything will be fine." Cyrus said it with a clearly-teasing tone, the slight frown he'd been wearing up until that point disappearing.
"Ah." Vesryn smiled a bit. He seemed to take the news quite well. "Sure, why not? Perhaps I should find some space then." He took a few steps away from his Dalish friends.
"Oh no, I--I, uh, I have tested it on candles," she quickly explained. "I fixed the airflow problem."
With everything prepared and no more questions, Asala began to prep the spell. It was not unlike her usual barrier spell, though she had to worry about the flexibility of it as well as create something static. She had practiced it with small scale usage, and she was able to work out how to feed it a set amount of mana, though she did not yet test it on larger subjects. Leon would have been a prime test, for if she could wrap him in a suitable barrier, than theoretically she could do the same to anyone of the Inquisition. However, Vesryn was also a suitable applicant.
She held her wrist with her other hand and summoned the spell to the fore. A dull thump sounded around Vesryn, the ground below him alighting in magic for a moment before it faded, leaving him encased in a shimmering blue barrier. The light from her hand faded as well, but the barrier remained signaling that the shield was now independent from Asala's control. "Can you move?" she asked, tentatively.
"Uh..." Vesryn looked immediately a bit uncomfortable, glancing down at himself perhaps to try to take a proper stock of what exactly Asala had done. "I'm not sure that's the most pertinent question." He could move, a little, but it seemed as though he had to strain just to get a small step forward, or raise his arms up from his sides. A bit like he was moving in one of those time-warped rifts they had encountered around Redcliffe.
"Am I supposed to be able to fight after you've cast this?" It seemed to be a genuine question. The barrier would certainly protect him for as long as it lasted, but with how little he was able to move, it would essentially offer any enemy free hits on him until it was destroyed. "I can breathe, at least."
Astraia laughed a little at that, and Zeth grinned at his friend's predicament as well.
"Actually... Yes," Asala answered, rather embarrassed before she glanced at Cyrus.
He was smiling as well, but as soon as she looked at him, it softened slightly. A few green sparks flickered in one of his hands; he flung them at Vesryn and dissipated the shield with minimal fanfare. “Pliability is still an issue, certainly." He raised a hand to his chin, rubbing at this jawline and rocking back on his heels. “You could try to make the entire thing elastic enough, but I suspect it would lose much of its strength if you did. I think you might have more success modeling it after actual armor."
Cyrus nodded at Vesryn. “As I'm sure you can see, there are parts of platemail that are as unyielding as you like, and other parts where it has to be jointed enough to accommodate movement. I recommend studying the anatomy of as many suits of armor as you can get your hands on, then trying to replicate one at a time. Perhaps ask the Commander to let you try and protect his arms while he pummels things, for example."
He patted her on the shoulder, though, in what was likely meant to be a reassuring fashion. “That you've made it even this far yet is excellent progress. Perhaps you would like to try making someone just a chestplate or a gauntlet and see how it works on a smaller scale?"
“You can try that on me, if you like," Estella added. “Maybe not the right arm, in case that interferes with something, but the left?" She readily extended it towards Asala, seemingly with no reservations at all about being a magical test subject.
"Of course," Asala asked cheerfully. The earlier set back didn't bother her much--that was the point her asking them all to accompany her. It was an experiment of sorts, and she was not expecting it to be immediately perfect. Though, she did linger on Vesryn's armor for a moment more. She would have to ask him, as well as Leon and a number of others to allow her to inspect their armor and the way they move in it. It seemed like a lot of work-- but she wasn't discouraged. In fact, she was excited by the prospect and emboldened by the progress.
She turned toward Estella and focused on the gauntlet, taking it into her own hand and took into account the tweaks Cyrus had mentioned. She noted the joints of the fingers and the slight bend to the its shape. Still holding it, Asala began to cast the spell. Just like with Vesryn, the spell produced a glow and when it faded a barrier was wrapped around Estella's hand. Of course, she had proved to be hasty in her casting, and she was caught in her own slight area of affect. In addition to Estella's gauntlet, her own hands were encased in matching barriers.
"Uh..." she said as she held them up. Regardless, she began to test the fingers of her own hand. "How... is it for you?" she asked Estella.
The Inquisitor tried to flex her fingers, from the look of it. Two of them moved a little, but the others remained more or less motionless. “Well, I'm not as strong as other people," Estella said, “but I'd have trouble gripping my sword, still." She lifted her shoulders, smiling good-naturedly.
"It is... certainly a work in progress," Asala agreed with a smile of her own. The barriers around her hands were much of the same way, her index and middle fingers flexing more easily than the rest, but even those had some rigidity in them. She glanced toward Cyrus with her best "I tried" smile she could muster. "Um.. help?" she asked, holding her hands up for her to dispel.
He huffed softly, but the spell was not long in coming, sloughing the barriers away from both her hands and Estella's. “Fine developments for now, certainly." He diverted his attention to their onlookers momentarily, tilting his head a bit. “While we're all working on our magic together, perhaps one of our guest mages would like to participate? Astraia, maybe? Your stonefist is quite impressive, if memory serves."
She smiled, fingers tightening a bit around her staff. "Thank you. It's a simple spell, though. I can't do it as powerfully as that if I don't have time to gather it together." Behind them a fair distance, the other elf, Shae, stood from the rock she was sitting on. She continued to watch, arms crossed. Astraia glanced briefly to her brother, and then back to Cyrus. "The weapons you made, from the Fade. That was also very impressive."
Cyrus inclined his head politely. “Thank you. I've been fortunate enough to have more than one excellent teacher." Something crossed his face for a moment at that, unreadable, but it disappeared a moment later. “Is primal magic your preferred school, then? I confess to a fondness for it myself. Perhaps some target practice would be in order for us."
She nodded enthusiastically. "Spirit, too, but yes, I seem to have the easiest time with rock and lightning. I, uh... I know I'm not very accurate. I should practice more." Her glance at Estella was almost too quick to notice before she looked away again, blinking a few times. "I was working on a petrify spell before we left the Tirashan."
"She's almost got it, too," Zeth pointed out. "Though more often than not I think the subject would end up crushed rather than encased. Which works fine in a battle."
"I want to be able to trap them without killing them," she offered, a bit meekly.
Asala smiled when she heard that and nodded gingerly. "I understand completely." Her own barriers were meant to protect instead of hurt, after all.
“Then let's try it." Cyrus accepted this with equanimity, though his glance darted to Zethlasan for a moment before resettling on Astraia. “You can petrify me. I promise not to be crushable." What looked to be several layers of arcane shielding rippled over the air in front of him. He didn't conform them to his body, as Asala had been attempting, but they were very close while maintaining their general shape.
He stepped well away from the others, allowing plenty of room for her to aim without worrying about anyone else. To Asala, this wasn't really anything unusual; he often volunteered to be the target of things she tried as well, when he wasn't needed for some other purpose, like dispelling. Perhaps it was just something that happened when you had spells that needed living targets.
To Astraia, however, this was obviously quite new, and she looked quite alarmed for several seconds, looking at Cyrus as though he was a bit mad. Though she obviously tried to hide that expression as well. "What? Petrify you? I... I've only ever tried on—on tree branches, or old bones, or other rocks. I shouldn't."
Zeth put a hand on her shoulder. "The rocks didn't have layers of arcane shields and barrier wielding mages nearby, sister. It'll be fine."
She appeared quite unconvinced that it would be, though she obviously wasn't sure who to look for in her search for reassurance. Or permission, perhaps. Finally she sought out Estella, eyes flicking between her and Cyrus. "I shouldn't."
Estella actually looked, of all things, a bit amused. Apparently, she was quite confident in Cyrus's ability not to get himself killed by wayward spell. “Actually... he does this sort of thing a lot. You don't have to if you don't want to, of course, but if Cy says it won't hurt him, I'm confident it won't."
That seemed to be the encouragement she needed, though she looked surprised that she was actually going to attempt this. Stepping away from her brother a pace to give herself some room, she lowered her staff towards Cyrus, though she carried it in one hand, leaving the other empty, fingers extending down towards the earth beneath her. Her eyes sought the ground Cyrus stood upon, and slowly at first she began to pull on the Fade, bits of brown colored stone swirling around her hands and staff.
She then lifted her hands up, the staff with it. From all sides of Cyrus appeared mounds of fractured stone, starting out perhaps a little farther than they should have. They smashed loudly into him on four different fronts with impressive force, enough that they ended up just shattering themselves, sending chunks of rock flying in every direction. Cyrus only disappeared for a moment, and indeed was fine when he reappeared, though Astraia only managed to notice that once she was willing to look at what she'd done.
Zethlasan tilted his head, pointer finger resting on his chin. "Mm. Close."
Cyrus doubled over, coughing out of what seemed to be some combination of the stone dust and dirt in the air and the actual impact of the slabs of earth against this shields and his person. Slapping his knee a few times, he straightened, the side of a fist pressed to the center of his chest. He was covered in dirt, some of it more like mud considering the weather lately, but he didn't seem upset.
Quite the contrary, as soon as he got the air back for it, he was laughing, a low chuckle that trailed off into an exaggerated sigh. “Now that was a spell." Both his hands raked through his hair, pushing the dark mass back away from his face and over his crown. Face mud-streaked, he grinned nevertheless. “And quite close to what you wanted, I think. It might be that you're surging a bit with the magic on release. If you can stop doing that and release softly instead, I think you'll have a bloody effective trap on your hands."
Apparently her brother's boyish grin and mucked-up appearance was enough to get the Inquisitor laughing, too, because she did, wrapping one arm around her middle as though to hold herself together. “You look like... oh, Cy, you're a mess." Her other hand lifted to her mouth, smothering the giggles she was still holding in.
"I'm sorry!" Astraia immediately said, though any worry she actually had seemed to be overridden by the way they were grinning and laughing. A smile worked its way onto her face as well. Probably a guilty one, but it didn't leave. At least, not until she seemed to become thoughtful. "Soft release," she repeated to herself. "Okay. Thank you."
Asala covered her mouth with her hand in shock. The spell was more... vigorous than she initially believed it would be. She had summoned a barrier in the nick of time to avoid being pelted by debris from the shattering stone. She felt for the poor woman, to have such unbridled power but a disdain for causing pain. Eventually, even Asala began to chuckle with the others. Soon, she calmed enough to finally speak to Astraia. "You will get better, you just need to practice," she said with a comforting smile.
Clapping his hands together, Cyrus rubbed his palms a bit, bouncing on his toes with an almost-childlike excitement. “All right. What's next? Anything else anyone would like to try? Asala? Stellulam?"
Estella shook her head, waving a hand. She was still smiling broadly though, something she did not often seem to do. “Not me, thanks. I'll leave the mad experiments to the rest of you."
"Actually..." Asala began, thinking on it for a moment. "There is one more thing I wish to try." She scanned the immediate area for a clear enough path away from the others, and once she found a spot she turned back to Cyrus. "Uh... ready?" she asked, her nerves seeping into her voice. She hadn't told Cyrus about this one...
She turned her head toward direction she wanted to go and slipped into the fade, cloaking herself in it. Keeping in mind how Cyrus does it, she looked ahead toward the spot she wished to go and stepped, flashing through the fade. Excitement and adrenaline gripped her as she shot across the distance, but about midway through something began to feel... off. Her path carried herself about halfway to her destination before she fell out of it, falling forward and having the momentum sling her through the mud and dirt a few feet before she finally stopped. Immediately she was up and gasping for breath, but between them she managed to relay, "I am fine! I am fine, I promise," before coughing some dirt out of her lungs.
Eventually, she managed to make it to a stand, and brushed as much dirt off of herself as she could-- but the mud stayed. She could feel it on her face, not unlike Cyrus a moment ago. "The... stopping is always the difficult part," she explained, with a rather meek laugh.
“Here's a true story for you: I overshot that spell the first time I used it. Slammed into a tree coming out of it and broke my arm. Couldn't do anything with it for a week, with healers." Cyrus was still grinning—he might have been struggling to contain more laughter, though it wasn't quite possible to tell. “I'd say that wasn't a bad try, by comparison."