The last time the Inquisitors had left Skyhold to practice with their marks, the lake had still been frozen over. Now what was white and ice blue was lush green and a deep dark, and though they didn't have quite as much space as before along the lake's shoreline, it was more than enough considering that neither of them was trying to teleport anymore.
Estella had that skill down well enough by now, having made excellent use of it in combat quite consistently, and Rom had given up on his hopes of replicating it altogether. If it was not because their marks were different, then it was because they were, and what Estella could do with hers was simply not accessible to Rom, and vice versa. She had yet to use hers in a directly aggressive manner the way he had grown accustomed to, though he couldn't help but think that if she wanted to learn, she would be able to.
Rom had requested the aid of Estella and her brother in mark-related matters not because he wanted to try again to do what Estella could, but because of what happened at Kasos, and what would probably happen again in the future, if he wasn't ready for it. At least it was warm for the practice this time.
"There has to be some way to use these to protect, right?" he asked, directing the question at both of the twins. "They seem versatile, if we can make things burst or instantly move across distances with them."
“Magic is about intent, to a significant degree." Cyrus was undoing his cuffs, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. He didn't look exactly comfortable in his own skin, yet—he hadn't in a long time. But there was clearly a significant improvement in that regard. He squinted skyward for a moment, then glanced at his sister. “Not in the moment, but over time. Education gets a hold of most people, disciplining their magic in turn, but the wide variance in what hedge mages are capable of is proof enough. Some can shapeshift, others channel spirits. It's all dependent on what they desire and in turn what they practice." He shrugged his shoulders.
“So there probably is a way. But first, you need the will. So to speak." He half-smiled, glancing between Rom and Estella. “Of course, these are the marks and not magic per se, so I could be completely off-base. Really only one way to find out, right?"
"Over time, though..." Estella looked down at her mark. "Wouldn't that mean it's easiest to get them to replicate or expand protections we're already used to? Maybe I could find some way to let other people teleport themselves?" Her brows knit; she didn't seem sure something like that was actually possible.
Protections he was already used to. That sounded like a problem, since all he knew how to do with his mark was destroy things. "Does it need to be something magical I'm used to?" He asked. He imagined it was fairly obvious what he hoped the answer would be. "Because I'm not used to anything magical. What I've done so far was just a twisting of what it does naturally to the rifts." Eventually, it did become a similar process to say, reaching for his crossbow and aiming, though never so automatic. It still required a great deal of focus in an often hectic moment.
"I'm just... not as strong as I used to be," he admitted. His trouble with the tonics he'd learned to produce under Chryseis's teachings wasn't a secret anymore, and though he hadn't gone around talking about it, the Irregulars at least would know that he had steadily worked his way off of them. It meant he wouldn't be beholden to them anymore soon, but it also meant that he wouldn't be repeating any miracles like surviving Anais's twisted flames again. Not unless he could find another way. "I don't trust myself nearly enough to try to protect anyone else with this," he gestured to his marked hand, "but at Kasos I was stopped in my tracks by a Venatori mage. That never would've happened before."
Cyrus rubbed thoughtfully at the arch of a brow with his index finger, humming under his breath. “I don't see any reason it would have to be. Magic often emulates the natural. Or perhaps the alchemical, in this case. Your body is accustomed to protective tonics, you're used to thinking in terms of what you can do with their assistance, what effects they can achieve, and so on." He dropped his hand with a shrug. “It's all academic until you give it a go, anyway. But I would say... try recalling how it feels and how it works. That particular method has helped the two of you before; it might do so again."
How it felt and how it worked. He wasn't sure how easy that would be to recreate. The tonics were euphoric as they went through him, and anything his mark had done had always been at best uncomfortable, and at worst outright painful. Still, if he focused on other parts of the feeling, and the effects they applied... it was like sinking into a pool of warm water, or possibly something more viscous, preventing him from feeling much of anything beyond himself. No heat, no cold, no jolts of energy, it all just washed over him.
He didn't think he could manage to slip into the Fade the way Estella could, but that was the wrong way of thinking about it. He was looking for something much more static, devoid of motion, almost the opposite of energy. He let his mark crackle to life, strands of the eerie green energy flickering in arcs away from his palm. When he'd created the rifts that led to blasts upon their closing the light had been volatile, pulsating erratically. As he let it emerge now it had more of a steady green glow, humming a low sound. With intense focus, he managed to create enough to wrap around his forearm, encasing himself up to the elbow in a translucent layer of energy.
"Try to burn me," he said suddenly, holding the arm out in front of Estella and taking a step to the side so he wouldn't be in the way. "Just a little fire. Quickly." He knew she didn't often perform magic in a straightforward way, but she was now the only mage among the three of them, and he didn't know how long he could hold this for a test.
Estella's eyes widened; she quite clearly hesitated. But Rom's haste seemed to have startled her into compliance, and she turned one of her palms upwards, a small flame sparking just over it. It grew for a moment, but then she frowned at it and reeled the spell back in, until it was only a little tongue of flame, licking upwards about six inches or so. Stepping slightly forward, she held her hand out away from her body, but didn't go so far as holding it directly under his arm, probably to let him control the amount of exposure. "If you need me to... adjust it, just say the word."
Rom went ahead and put his arm directly over the flame anyway, bracing himself momentarily for the stinging pain of a burn, but none came, and he double checked to make sure that his arm was actually over the flame. It still felt somewhat warm, but instead of a burn it was a pleasant heat. Still, he didn't think that was quite right.
"More," he said, frowning slightly. "Please."
Estella grimaced, but nodded, and the flame grew until it swallowed her hand, flickering up over the skin of his arm to meet again above it. She kept glancing between that and his eyes, almost skittish. Probably hoping whatever he was doing would last.
It did... at least for a moment. The warmth grew only slightly at first, even as the flames wrapped around his forearm, but then the green light sparked out of his hand and pulsated in a wave along the length it covered of his arm. Immediately he felt a strong burn at several points on his arm, and he wrenched it away, hissing in pain. The green light faded as he gave up on the effort, shaking out his arm and taking the few steps necessary to the lake, where he sank to a knee and plunged the arm in, sighing audibly in relief at the chilly cold of the mountain-fed water.
"It, uh... didn't work," he said, stating the obvious. "It wasn't bad at first, still warm, but manageable. Then it was like holes just opened up in it. I don't know if that was from me or from the fire."
"I-It might have a damage or duration threshold," Estella said, her face openly apologetic despite the fact that he was the one who'd asked her to use the spell in the first place. "Maybe one you could increase with practice. It took a while for me to be able to do more than one jump at a time." She crouched next to him and held out both hands. "I can, um, get rid of those burns. Probably. Save you the trip to the infirmary."
When he held out his arm, she passed both her hands a few inches away, coated in magic. It took considerably longer than any of the specialists at Skyhold would have, but slowly the burns faded. Estella glanced up at her brother. "Unless you think it's something else?"
Cyrus shook his head. “No, you're most likely right. Like anything else, it will take some time to get the hang of it. Perhaps best practiced with slightly less damaging elements than fire in the meantime." He sat down on the grass just short of the water, crossing his legs underneath him. “Might be worth testing against other kinds of damage, too, just to see what the boundaries are. I'm sure you've got a better grip on knife safety than either of us, though." He smiled, a hint of humor breaking through his demeanor. “So maybe do that test yourself."
He certainly wasn't going to ask Estella to try cutting him, considering that burning him obviously didn't sit well with her, even when he'd asked for it. "Yeah, probably just need to practice," he agreed. "Wish it didn't feel so uncomfortable to use this." He suspected it was the same for Estella, and also that it would always be that way. Whatever had happened to them was probably not meant to happen to humans. Calling on it, even to close rifts, always felt like he was opening a little doorway to something far more powerful than he had any right to control. Not that the control was ever very easy to achieve.
"I'm sorry I dragged you both out here just for this," he said, shaking off his arm of some of the water clinging to it once Estella was done healing. "Better safe than sorry, I guess, when dealing with these. It's just hit me that I have this sudden... weakness to magic, that I never had before. And this is just the worst time to have something like that." Even besides the Venatori they regularly had to face, there was also the matter of the mage that had once owned him, someone he suspected he would see again sooner rather than later. They were not technically enemies, but Rom did not like the idea of being vulnerable to her in the event that things turned that way.
Estella shook her head. "Believe me," she said, "I understand feeling like you have to make up for something. Glad we could help you get started." She paused a moment, shifting a bit in her crouch and letting her hands rest over her knees. "But, um, if you don't mind staying a little longer, I'd like to try something with mine, too. Possibly on you, if that's okay. That way Cy can observe and tell us if anything changes from his perspective."
He might've said something about how it probably wasn't wise for the Inquisitors to be using each other and themselves repeatedly as test subjects, but he seriously doubted Estella would be willing to try something that had any risk of hurting him badly. "Alright," he agreed, slowly getting back to his feet. "What are we doing to me?"
"Hopefully we're teleporting you, but I guess we'll see if that works or not." She stood too, taking a couple of steps backwards, such that there was about three feet of space between them. The mark on her right hand began to crackle, but soon subsided to something softer, a steady hum with a higher pitch than his had. Like when she teleported, a greenish mist slowly enveloped her, and she almost blurred a little at the edges.
Her shoulders moved as she took in a breath. "Okay, this is like normal. I'm going to try and spread this out now. That's how I can take other people with me, so maybe it'll..." The words, at first clearly directed at him, receded to a murmur. She was thinking aloud more than anything.
But the mist did spread, some of it coalescing around him as though it were magnetized to living bodies. The space between he and Estella was thick with it, too, until she started backing off. First one step, then another; the green cloud of fog thinned until it was nearly transparent, just a slight tint. One more step, and the connection broke.
The mist seemed to shudder and roil, but then Estella sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth, and it stabilized, leaving him with a green filter over his vision, but no pain or other ill effects.
Everything around him suddenly appeared as though... well, it was difficult to describe. Like the air had become a slow moving river, and he was standing submerged in it entirely. There was a blur over almost everything in his vision, all save for Estella, who was still quite clear where she stood. Rom wasn't sure if he should move or not, if it was safe to. He wasn't moving, which he'd thought was Estella's intention, to move him through a space without physically touching him.
A few more seconds and it passed, however, the appearance of everything around him returning to normal as the mist that clung to him dispersed painlessly. He looked briefly down at himself to ensure nothing drastic had happened, and that he was still standing in the same spot. "So... what just happened?"
“Hard to tell, since neither of you moved much, but..." Cyrus trailed off, tilting his head and rising from where he sat. “I recognize what a time distortion looks like, having caused a few myself." He crossed his arms, then turned to Rom. “How did it look to you? From inside?"
"Like..." Rom struggled for the words for a moment. "Like standing underwater, but, with the air as the water. If that makes any sense." It didn't really make sense to him, but that was what he'd seen. "If that was a time distortion... is that something we should be messing with? Considering what we've seen of that magic?"
Cyrus shook his head, though it didn't seem to be a direct answer to the wording of the question. “These distortions are minor. The amount of energy it would take to create anything similar to what Cassius did at Redcliffe... well, Stellulam would have to be trying very deliberately to achieve that, assuming the marks alone are capable. We've not seen any evidence that they can do anything on quite that scale." He shrugged. “It's about as safe as anything else is, with those."
"So... no trying to tear the fabric of reality apart. Got it." Estella's reply was almost sardonic. "Not that we're at much risk of me being capable of that. Looks like I'll be lucky to speed someone up for a few seconds, if this was anything to go by."
"Looks like we both have some things to practice, then," Rom concluded. "It's not the worst thing, knowing that there's always room to grow."
Estella had that skill down well enough by now, having made excellent use of it in combat quite consistently, and Rom had given up on his hopes of replicating it altogether. If it was not because their marks were different, then it was because they were, and what Estella could do with hers was simply not accessible to Rom, and vice versa. She had yet to use hers in a directly aggressive manner the way he had grown accustomed to, though he couldn't help but think that if she wanted to learn, she would be able to.
Rom had requested the aid of Estella and her brother in mark-related matters not because he wanted to try again to do what Estella could, but because of what happened at Kasos, and what would probably happen again in the future, if he wasn't ready for it. At least it was warm for the practice this time.
"There has to be some way to use these to protect, right?" he asked, directing the question at both of the twins. "They seem versatile, if we can make things burst or instantly move across distances with them."
“Magic is about intent, to a significant degree." Cyrus was undoing his cuffs, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. He didn't look exactly comfortable in his own skin, yet—he hadn't in a long time. But there was clearly a significant improvement in that regard. He squinted skyward for a moment, then glanced at his sister. “Not in the moment, but over time. Education gets a hold of most people, disciplining their magic in turn, but the wide variance in what hedge mages are capable of is proof enough. Some can shapeshift, others channel spirits. It's all dependent on what they desire and in turn what they practice." He shrugged his shoulders.
“So there probably is a way. But first, you need the will. So to speak." He half-smiled, glancing between Rom and Estella. “Of course, these are the marks and not magic per se, so I could be completely off-base. Really only one way to find out, right?"
"Over time, though..." Estella looked down at her mark. "Wouldn't that mean it's easiest to get them to replicate or expand protections we're already used to? Maybe I could find some way to let other people teleport themselves?" Her brows knit; she didn't seem sure something like that was actually possible.
Protections he was already used to. That sounded like a problem, since all he knew how to do with his mark was destroy things. "Does it need to be something magical I'm used to?" He asked. He imagined it was fairly obvious what he hoped the answer would be. "Because I'm not used to anything magical. What I've done so far was just a twisting of what it does naturally to the rifts." Eventually, it did become a similar process to say, reaching for his crossbow and aiming, though never so automatic. It still required a great deal of focus in an often hectic moment.
"I'm just... not as strong as I used to be," he admitted. His trouble with the tonics he'd learned to produce under Chryseis's teachings wasn't a secret anymore, and though he hadn't gone around talking about it, the Irregulars at least would know that he had steadily worked his way off of them. It meant he wouldn't be beholden to them anymore soon, but it also meant that he wouldn't be repeating any miracles like surviving Anais's twisted flames again. Not unless he could find another way. "I don't trust myself nearly enough to try to protect anyone else with this," he gestured to his marked hand, "but at Kasos I was stopped in my tracks by a Venatori mage. That never would've happened before."
Cyrus rubbed thoughtfully at the arch of a brow with his index finger, humming under his breath. “I don't see any reason it would have to be. Magic often emulates the natural. Or perhaps the alchemical, in this case. Your body is accustomed to protective tonics, you're used to thinking in terms of what you can do with their assistance, what effects they can achieve, and so on." He dropped his hand with a shrug. “It's all academic until you give it a go, anyway. But I would say... try recalling how it feels and how it works. That particular method has helped the two of you before; it might do so again."
How it felt and how it worked. He wasn't sure how easy that would be to recreate. The tonics were euphoric as they went through him, and anything his mark had done had always been at best uncomfortable, and at worst outright painful. Still, if he focused on other parts of the feeling, and the effects they applied... it was like sinking into a pool of warm water, or possibly something more viscous, preventing him from feeling much of anything beyond himself. No heat, no cold, no jolts of energy, it all just washed over him.
He didn't think he could manage to slip into the Fade the way Estella could, but that was the wrong way of thinking about it. He was looking for something much more static, devoid of motion, almost the opposite of energy. He let his mark crackle to life, strands of the eerie green energy flickering in arcs away from his palm. When he'd created the rifts that led to blasts upon their closing the light had been volatile, pulsating erratically. As he let it emerge now it had more of a steady green glow, humming a low sound. With intense focus, he managed to create enough to wrap around his forearm, encasing himself up to the elbow in a translucent layer of energy.
"Try to burn me," he said suddenly, holding the arm out in front of Estella and taking a step to the side so he wouldn't be in the way. "Just a little fire. Quickly." He knew she didn't often perform magic in a straightforward way, but she was now the only mage among the three of them, and he didn't know how long he could hold this for a test.
Estella's eyes widened; she quite clearly hesitated. But Rom's haste seemed to have startled her into compliance, and she turned one of her palms upwards, a small flame sparking just over it. It grew for a moment, but then she frowned at it and reeled the spell back in, until it was only a little tongue of flame, licking upwards about six inches or so. Stepping slightly forward, she held her hand out away from her body, but didn't go so far as holding it directly under his arm, probably to let him control the amount of exposure. "If you need me to... adjust it, just say the word."
Rom went ahead and put his arm directly over the flame anyway, bracing himself momentarily for the stinging pain of a burn, but none came, and he double checked to make sure that his arm was actually over the flame. It still felt somewhat warm, but instead of a burn it was a pleasant heat. Still, he didn't think that was quite right.
"More," he said, frowning slightly. "Please."
Estella grimaced, but nodded, and the flame grew until it swallowed her hand, flickering up over the skin of his arm to meet again above it. She kept glancing between that and his eyes, almost skittish. Probably hoping whatever he was doing would last.
It did... at least for a moment. The warmth grew only slightly at first, even as the flames wrapped around his forearm, but then the green light sparked out of his hand and pulsated in a wave along the length it covered of his arm. Immediately he felt a strong burn at several points on his arm, and he wrenched it away, hissing in pain. The green light faded as he gave up on the effort, shaking out his arm and taking the few steps necessary to the lake, where he sank to a knee and plunged the arm in, sighing audibly in relief at the chilly cold of the mountain-fed water.
"It, uh... didn't work," he said, stating the obvious. "It wasn't bad at first, still warm, but manageable. Then it was like holes just opened up in it. I don't know if that was from me or from the fire."
"I-It might have a damage or duration threshold," Estella said, her face openly apologetic despite the fact that he was the one who'd asked her to use the spell in the first place. "Maybe one you could increase with practice. It took a while for me to be able to do more than one jump at a time." She crouched next to him and held out both hands. "I can, um, get rid of those burns. Probably. Save you the trip to the infirmary."
When he held out his arm, she passed both her hands a few inches away, coated in magic. It took considerably longer than any of the specialists at Skyhold would have, but slowly the burns faded. Estella glanced up at her brother. "Unless you think it's something else?"
Cyrus shook his head. “No, you're most likely right. Like anything else, it will take some time to get the hang of it. Perhaps best practiced with slightly less damaging elements than fire in the meantime." He sat down on the grass just short of the water, crossing his legs underneath him. “Might be worth testing against other kinds of damage, too, just to see what the boundaries are. I'm sure you've got a better grip on knife safety than either of us, though." He smiled, a hint of humor breaking through his demeanor. “So maybe do that test yourself."
He certainly wasn't going to ask Estella to try cutting him, considering that burning him obviously didn't sit well with her, even when he'd asked for it. "Yeah, probably just need to practice," he agreed. "Wish it didn't feel so uncomfortable to use this." He suspected it was the same for Estella, and also that it would always be that way. Whatever had happened to them was probably not meant to happen to humans. Calling on it, even to close rifts, always felt like he was opening a little doorway to something far more powerful than he had any right to control. Not that the control was ever very easy to achieve.
"I'm sorry I dragged you both out here just for this," he said, shaking off his arm of some of the water clinging to it once Estella was done healing. "Better safe than sorry, I guess, when dealing with these. It's just hit me that I have this sudden... weakness to magic, that I never had before. And this is just the worst time to have something like that." Even besides the Venatori they regularly had to face, there was also the matter of the mage that had once owned him, someone he suspected he would see again sooner rather than later. They were not technically enemies, but Rom did not like the idea of being vulnerable to her in the event that things turned that way.
Estella shook her head. "Believe me," she said, "I understand feeling like you have to make up for something. Glad we could help you get started." She paused a moment, shifting a bit in her crouch and letting her hands rest over her knees. "But, um, if you don't mind staying a little longer, I'd like to try something with mine, too. Possibly on you, if that's okay. That way Cy can observe and tell us if anything changes from his perspective."
He might've said something about how it probably wasn't wise for the Inquisitors to be using each other and themselves repeatedly as test subjects, but he seriously doubted Estella would be willing to try something that had any risk of hurting him badly. "Alright," he agreed, slowly getting back to his feet. "What are we doing to me?"
"Hopefully we're teleporting you, but I guess we'll see if that works or not." She stood too, taking a couple of steps backwards, such that there was about three feet of space between them. The mark on her right hand began to crackle, but soon subsided to something softer, a steady hum with a higher pitch than his had. Like when she teleported, a greenish mist slowly enveloped her, and she almost blurred a little at the edges.
Her shoulders moved as she took in a breath. "Okay, this is like normal. I'm going to try and spread this out now. That's how I can take other people with me, so maybe it'll..." The words, at first clearly directed at him, receded to a murmur. She was thinking aloud more than anything.
But the mist did spread, some of it coalescing around him as though it were magnetized to living bodies. The space between he and Estella was thick with it, too, until she started backing off. First one step, then another; the green cloud of fog thinned until it was nearly transparent, just a slight tint. One more step, and the connection broke.
The mist seemed to shudder and roil, but then Estella sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth, and it stabilized, leaving him with a green filter over his vision, but no pain or other ill effects.
Everything around him suddenly appeared as though... well, it was difficult to describe. Like the air had become a slow moving river, and he was standing submerged in it entirely. There was a blur over almost everything in his vision, all save for Estella, who was still quite clear where she stood. Rom wasn't sure if he should move or not, if it was safe to. He wasn't moving, which he'd thought was Estella's intention, to move him through a space without physically touching him.
A few more seconds and it passed, however, the appearance of everything around him returning to normal as the mist that clung to him dispersed painlessly. He looked briefly down at himself to ensure nothing drastic had happened, and that he was still standing in the same spot. "So... what just happened?"
“Hard to tell, since neither of you moved much, but..." Cyrus trailed off, tilting his head and rising from where he sat. “I recognize what a time distortion looks like, having caused a few myself." He crossed his arms, then turned to Rom. “How did it look to you? From inside?"
"Like..." Rom struggled for the words for a moment. "Like standing underwater, but, with the air as the water. If that makes any sense." It didn't really make sense to him, but that was what he'd seen. "If that was a time distortion... is that something we should be messing with? Considering what we've seen of that magic?"
Cyrus shook his head, though it didn't seem to be a direct answer to the wording of the question. “These distortions are minor. The amount of energy it would take to create anything similar to what Cassius did at Redcliffe... well, Stellulam would have to be trying very deliberately to achieve that, assuming the marks alone are capable. We've not seen any evidence that they can do anything on quite that scale." He shrugged. “It's about as safe as anything else is, with those."
"So... no trying to tear the fabric of reality apart. Got it." Estella's reply was almost sardonic. "Not that we're at much risk of me being capable of that. Looks like I'll be lucky to speed someone up for a few seconds, if this was anything to go by."
"Looks like we both have some things to practice, then," Rom concluded. "It's not the worst thing, knowing that there's always room to grow."