The little group picked their way down from Skyhold toward the lakeside that rest below the keep. Asala always thought it was a lovely spot, and utilitarian when necessary. However, today's visit was more of the latter variety, though the former was always a plus in her book. She had decided to take Leon up on his suggestion and start practicing on her tactics, or at the very least learn how to do things so that she wouldn't inadvertently get in the others' way. For this little excursion, she had obviously asked Khari to come along, and Astraia as well. At the very least, she had hoped to learn the basics by the days end. Or the basics of basics. She was no soldier, nor had she ever had to learn how to work as part of unit. She'd never even considered how her magic might have affected the others, not until Leon brought it up. Bluntly, but still.
"So, uh, any initial suggestions? Ideas? I must admit, I am... a bit out of my element," Asala asked with an apologetic smile.
Khari hummed, taking a few more steps forward and half-turning back around to face them. “Well, this part's pretty flat, so your options would be limited. Leon said you wanted to learn crowd control. You could still do some of that here." She crossed her arms loosely over her body and shrugged. “Say I'm standing right here, out in the open like this, right? And I'm way outnumbered. What can you do to help me that's not gonna stop me from moving around when I need to?"
"I guess..." Asala began looking around trying to find a satisfactory answer. Khari was correct, the place was flat, and nothing stood out to her that would lend itself to accomplishing the goal. That meant she'd have to come up with something on her own. She tilted her head and glanced back toward Khari. "Uh, I guess I would... Protect your back?" she answered, summoning a barrier behind her in demonstration.
“Putting a wall to my back isn't exactly going to help me stay mobile, is it?" Khari arched an eyebrow. “But putting walls in front of them? Much better idea when fighting with someone like me. Defense isn't just about shielding individual people. Castles are defenses. High ground is a defense. Choke points are a defense. You have the ability to either create or at least take advantage of all of those things, without putting a barrier anywhere near me."
She pursed her lips, glancing around as though looking for something in particular. “No doubt trying to all of that at once would be impossible, and we're all just going to have to live with the fact that magic shields aren't as good as stone walls. But this is battle—even a few seconds' delay can make all the difference between killing and getting killed." She took several more large steps backwards, putting distance between them. “So right now, pretend that barriers won't work at all if they're closer than ten feet to me. The Venatori are coming in from over there." She pointed across the field. “And it's just the three of us. We've got to set ourselves up so we don't die. What do you do?"
Astraia had been leaning on her staff for the moment, listening to the exchange at the edge, but once Khari set up the situation, she lowered the staff slightly, taking one hand from it and lifting it palm up in the direction of the "Venatori." Several mounds of dirt raised from the ground, thin and no more than three feet tall, packed enough to stay together. She continued until there were ten of them. Visual aids, it would seem. She could probably move them easily enough, too.
"Delay... them?" Asala asked, though her answer was shaky. However, she did make an effort to turn toward Astraia smile and nod her appreciation for the visuals. "To uh, prepare ourselves better? Or at the very least... Delay a few of them, so that they do not overrun us all at one time?" she asked again. If she could somehow negate their numbers, then they had a better chance of standing up to them. Only dealing with two or three at a time would be a whole lot better than having to face them all at once.
With that, she turned toward the earthen figures. From her hands a barrier sprung to life, rather short, but not short enough to simply climb over. Rather, it was wide, covering most of the intended trajectory of the figures. She then waved her hands back and forth, causing the barrier to shift with them.
"That seems like a good idea," Astraia agreed. The two dirt mounds caught on their side of the barrier were scattered to the wind, representative of Khari hacking them down or any other unfortunate end for them. Two more popped up on the other side. "Rather than spread them out," She pushed the figures away from one another, spacing them roughly evenly, "you could also try to trick them, maybe? Give them a reason to group up close to each other, even in an open space like this. Lots of magic is more useful when the targets aren't spread out."
Asala tilted her head as she listened, taking in all the advice she could. It was sound, of course, Asala had personally witnessed the damage a well placed fireball could do to a group of enemies. If she could force them to group up like that for her allies, then... She turned her attention back to the barrier and began to twist and turn her hands. The barrier responded to her commands, bending and warping so as to make a rounded L-shape. She then motioned for the barrier to begin moving back and forth, in an attempt to corral the earth figures.
"Say... Something like this?" she asked, glancing back toward them.
Khari reached up to scratch her head. “Keeping it moving like that seems like a lot of work. Can't you just kinda make a funnel and leave it standing? Sure they might break it eventually, but it'd give you time and resources to do other stuff." She looked skeptically at the moving barrier, frowning slightly for a reason that was not clear. "Like... if Leon's standing in a choke point and getting fed one enemy at a time because there are barriers mimicking natural terrain, the battle's over, you know?" She shrugged. “Or Astraia here throws in a chain lightning and fries them all because they're wasting time trying to take it down."
Asala frowned at that and let the glow die from her hands. "Leave it standing? Er," she said glancing back toward the figures. While she had been working on creating static armor from her barriers, creating a static wall was something else entirely. "Well, you see. The thing is, I am unable to, uh, just set a barrier up," she added. "I have to constantly feed them mana in order for them to, uh, stay. Otherwise they will implode on themselves," she said with a glance to her feet. It was also why repelling attacks took more energy than just summoning a barrier. It took more energy for the shield to keep its form and shape under duress.
"But... I can funnel them," she said, the glow returning to her hands. This time, she kept her hands further a part, and concentrated harder. Controlling two barriers at a time was more difficult than just one large one after all. A pair of them flashed to life, and slowly molded into large rounded funnel, the mouth of which just wide enough to let through two at a time. She didn't say much after that, focusing on the two barriers she just erected.
They kept at the practice, forming barriers into different shapes, some of which held better than others, until Asala was struggling to alter them, at which point Khari called a halt. “Take a breather. We can go looking for some different terrain while you rest a bit." Apparently, hiking through the mountains was what counted as 'rest' for Khari. Probably just because it wasn't actively practicing anything. She didn't ever seem to run out of energy.
Flashing a grin, she struck out south, picking a steep upward slope that would take them up the side of the mountain. The footing mostly seemed solid, but it was probably a better idea to step where the others did, just to make sure. Glancing back over her shoulder, Khari met eyes with Astraia for a moment. “Don't see you a lot, Astraia. Stuff's going well for you with the mages and all that?" Though her words weren't especially delicate, she did seem interested in the answer.
"Mostly," was the one she gave. Like Khari, Astraia didn't seem bothered by the hike, though she certainly didn't seem to thrive on physical activity the way the red-haired elf did. "I'm getting better, but not as fast anymore. I still can't aim most spells well at all. I can usually get the effect I want, but it'll be too much of it, or in the wrong place." Her hair jingled softly with each upward step they took. She still hadn't gotten out of the habit of ornamenting it with many things that she found. Nor had it seen much of a cut in a long while.
"I'm keeping at it, though. The practice is good for keeping my mind off things, if nothing else." She didn't have to specify what she was trying to avoid. Vesryn had been steadily growing worse lately, the second time in recent memory Astraia had needed to watch either friend or family fighting a losing battle with a sickness of some unbeatable kind. "There's been more time for it lately. No battles, nothing major in the infirmary since you got back from Kasos with the Commander." She shook her head. "I don't know how you and the others do stuff like that so often. Just... throw yourself at the most dangerous things like that."
“Someone has to, right?" Khari dropped back to walk a little more in line with them when the trail evened out a bit, rolling her shoulders. “I'm pretty good at being cavalier with my own safety, I guess. Believe it or not, it's something you can get used to, with enough time." Her expression sobered at that, brows knitting together. “It helps knowing that there are people with you that you can trust, though."
She was quiet a moment, then spoke up again. “Did you ever learn to actually fight with your staff, or is it just a conduit? Sometimes when I feel like I'm hitting a wall with one thing, all I need to do is change to something else for a while."
"Fight with it?" she repeated, as though the idea had been quite foreign to her. "No, I've never really thought to try that. I'm... well, I'm really small, obviously, and it always seemed like if I needed to defend myself, my magic would serve me better than anything I could do physically." She had a point. Astraia was even shorter than Khari, and where Khari had built muscle Astraia was quite thin. Slender, in the way the elves often were.
"Do you think I should?" She sounded a little daunted by the thought. "Some of the other mages do. Aurora does, but that's because, well." She made a brief punching motion, referencing the mage captain's rather unique style. As of yet Astraia didn't seem to have much of a style, save for slinging powerful spells when absolutely required, and hoping they only harmed her enemies.
“It couldn't hurt to know how, could it? If it goes well, you have an option if someone gets too close for the bigger spells to be safe. If it doesn't, it might be good exercise at least. I bet Cy knows how to use one, and he kinda seems like he needs more to do these days. Or Harellan, maybe." Khari stopped speaking for a moment to mount a ledge about as high as her chest, pulling herself up smoothly.
“And if you're good enough with a physical weapon like that, you can take people out without doing them any permanent harm. I dunno much about magic, but it seems harder to guarantee that unless you use something all defensive like Asala does." She glanced a moment at the Qunari woman, then stepped away from the ledge so the other two could climb it.
"And I don't know if I'll ever have the control to maintain anything like that." Constant, sustained spells didn't seem to be her strength, though she wasn't faring poorly at new healing techniques she was learning. "Maybe I will ask Cy." She seemed to think on it a moment longer after she said it, before nodding to herself. She certainly spent a decent amount of her time around him, often going up to his tower after she was finished at the infirmary or training with the other mages, either to read or talk or stargaze. She made no mention of Harellan, and if she thought that was as plausible.
"What about you, Asala? Anything else on your mind?" She looked back after asking the question, likely to check if Asala was able to keep up. "Should we slow down?"
Asala flashed a bright smile upon mention of her name "No, no. I am fine, thank you," she said. Despite her words, sweat was beginning to form in her hairline. She was certainly not as athletic as Khari, by far, and Astraia was Dalish--some path finding was to be expected she supposed. Fortunately, the ledge was not as tall for her as it was for the others. She put her back to it and lifted herself onto it in a seated position. Before spinning around and standing however, she extended a hand for Astraia to take. Khari was right, of course. Earth was far too blunt and powerful to be reliably nonlethal, and one needed very specific control to render someone unconscious with lightning. She certainly would not wish to risk it.
"I have not used a staff myself in quite sometime," she said, tapping the focusing crystal that hung around her neck. Instead of being embedded in a staff, Cyrus had fashioned her a necklace out of one. "Though, if you do go to see Cyrus, I would not mind accompanying you. I am afraid I have not visited as much as I should," she said with a frown. Between all of her studies and practicing with Ethne, she hadn't really found the time to visit, and thinking about it now made her feel guilty.
"Okay," she acquiesced. "I'll try to let you know ahead of time." There was something else to her words, a slight bit of unease, but whatever was behind it she kept under the surface, choosing instead to look around at their climb.
"Have you ever had to fight in a place like this, Khari? A mountainside, steep paths? I imagine that would make things difficult."
“Well, not falling off is pretty important, obviously." Khari cracked another grin. “But yeah, in a place like this, a lot of the bottleneck stuff will already be set up for you. So probably the best uses of your barriers are going to be enhancing what's already there, or creating more space for your allies. So." She clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “Can you make barriers strong enough to stand on?"
"So, uh, any initial suggestions? Ideas? I must admit, I am... a bit out of my element," Asala asked with an apologetic smile.
Khari hummed, taking a few more steps forward and half-turning back around to face them. “Well, this part's pretty flat, so your options would be limited. Leon said you wanted to learn crowd control. You could still do some of that here." She crossed her arms loosely over her body and shrugged. “Say I'm standing right here, out in the open like this, right? And I'm way outnumbered. What can you do to help me that's not gonna stop me from moving around when I need to?"
"I guess..." Asala began looking around trying to find a satisfactory answer. Khari was correct, the place was flat, and nothing stood out to her that would lend itself to accomplishing the goal. That meant she'd have to come up with something on her own. She tilted her head and glanced back toward Khari. "Uh, I guess I would... Protect your back?" she answered, summoning a barrier behind her in demonstration.
“Putting a wall to my back isn't exactly going to help me stay mobile, is it?" Khari arched an eyebrow. “But putting walls in front of them? Much better idea when fighting with someone like me. Defense isn't just about shielding individual people. Castles are defenses. High ground is a defense. Choke points are a defense. You have the ability to either create or at least take advantage of all of those things, without putting a barrier anywhere near me."
She pursed her lips, glancing around as though looking for something in particular. “No doubt trying to all of that at once would be impossible, and we're all just going to have to live with the fact that magic shields aren't as good as stone walls. But this is battle—even a few seconds' delay can make all the difference between killing and getting killed." She took several more large steps backwards, putting distance between them. “So right now, pretend that barriers won't work at all if they're closer than ten feet to me. The Venatori are coming in from over there." She pointed across the field. “And it's just the three of us. We've got to set ourselves up so we don't die. What do you do?"
Astraia had been leaning on her staff for the moment, listening to the exchange at the edge, but once Khari set up the situation, she lowered the staff slightly, taking one hand from it and lifting it palm up in the direction of the "Venatori." Several mounds of dirt raised from the ground, thin and no more than three feet tall, packed enough to stay together. She continued until there were ten of them. Visual aids, it would seem. She could probably move them easily enough, too.
"Delay... them?" Asala asked, though her answer was shaky. However, she did make an effort to turn toward Astraia smile and nod her appreciation for the visuals. "To uh, prepare ourselves better? Or at the very least... Delay a few of them, so that they do not overrun us all at one time?" she asked again. If she could somehow negate their numbers, then they had a better chance of standing up to them. Only dealing with two or three at a time would be a whole lot better than having to face them all at once.
With that, she turned toward the earthen figures. From her hands a barrier sprung to life, rather short, but not short enough to simply climb over. Rather, it was wide, covering most of the intended trajectory of the figures. She then waved her hands back and forth, causing the barrier to shift with them.
"That seems like a good idea," Astraia agreed. The two dirt mounds caught on their side of the barrier were scattered to the wind, representative of Khari hacking them down or any other unfortunate end for them. Two more popped up on the other side. "Rather than spread them out," She pushed the figures away from one another, spacing them roughly evenly, "you could also try to trick them, maybe? Give them a reason to group up close to each other, even in an open space like this. Lots of magic is more useful when the targets aren't spread out."
Asala tilted her head as she listened, taking in all the advice she could. It was sound, of course, Asala had personally witnessed the damage a well placed fireball could do to a group of enemies. If she could force them to group up like that for her allies, then... She turned her attention back to the barrier and began to twist and turn her hands. The barrier responded to her commands, bending and warping so as to make a rounded L-shape. She then motioned for the barrier to begin moving back and forth, in an attempt to corral the earth figures.
"Say... Something like this?" she asked, glancing back toward them.
Khari reached up to scratch her head. “Keeping it moving like that seems like a lot of work. Can't you just kinda make a funnel and leave it standing? Sure they might break it eventually, but it'd give you time and resources to do other stuff." She looked skeptically at the moving barrier, frowning slightly for a reason that was not clear. "Like... if Leon's standing in a choke point and getting fed one enemy at a time because there are barriers mimicking natural terrain, the battle's over, you know?" She shrugged. “Or Astraia here throws in a chain lightning and fries them all because they're wasting time trying to take it down."
Asala frowned at that and let the glow die from her hands. "Leave it standing? Er," she said glancing back toward the figures. While she had been working on creating static armor from her barriers, creating a static wall was something else entirely. "Well, you see. The thing is, I am unable to, uh, just set a barrier up," she added. "I have to constantly feed them mana in order for them to, uh, stay. Otherwise they will implode on themselves," she said with a glance to her feet. It was also why repelling attacks took more energy than just summoning a barrier. It took more energy for the shield to keep its form and shape under duress.
"But... I can funnel them," she said, the glow returning to her hands. This time, she kept her hands further a part, and concentrated harder. Controlling two barriers at a time was more difficult than just one large one after all. A pair of them flashed to life, and slowly molded into large rounded funnel, the mouth of which just wide enough to let through two at a time. She didn't say much after that, focusing on the two barriers she just erected.
They kept at the practice, forming barriers into different shapes, some of which held better than others, until Asala was struggling to alter them, at which point Khari called a halt. “Take a breather. We can go looking for some different terrain while you rest a bit." Apparently, hiking through the mountains was what counted as 'rest' for Khari. Probably just because it wasn't actively practicing anything. She didn't ever seem to run out of energy.
Flashing a grin, she struck out south, picking a steep upward slope that would take them up the side of the mountain. The footing mostly seemed solid, but it was probably a better idea to step where the others did, just to make sure. Glancing back over her shoulder, Khari met eyes with Astraia for a moment. “Don't see you a lot, Astraia. Stuff's going well for you with the mages and all that?" Though her words weren't especially delicate, she did seem interested in the answer.
"Mostly," was the one she gave. Like Khari, Astraia didn't seem bothered by the hike, though she certainly didn't seem to thrive on physical activity the way the red-haired elf did. "I'm getting better, but not as fast anymore. I still can't aim most spells well at all. I can usually get the effect I want, but it'll be too much of it, or in the wrong place." Her hair jingled softly with each upward step they took. She still hadn't gotten out of the habit of ornamenting it with many things that she found. Nor had it seen much of a cut in a long while.
"I'm keeping at it, though. The practice is good for keeping my mind off things, if nothing else." She didn't have to specify what she was trying to avoid. Vesryn had been steadily growing worse lately, the second time in recent memory Astraia had needed to watch either friend or family fighting a losing battle with a sickness of some unbeatable kind. "There's been more time for it lately. No battles, nothing major in the infirmary since you got back from Kasos with the Commander." She shook her head. "I don't know how you and the others do stuff like that so often. Just... throw yourself at the most dangerous things like that."
“Someone has to, right?" Khari dropped back to walk a little more in line with them when the trail evened out a bit, rolling her shoulders. “I'm pretty good at being cavalier with my own safety, I guess. Believe it or not, it's something you can get used to, with enough time." Her expression sobered at that, brows knitting together. “It helps knowing that there are people with you that you can trust, though."
She was quiet a moment, then spoke up again. “Did you ever learn to actually fight with your staff, or is it just a conduit? Sometimes when I feel like I'm hitting a wall with one thing, all I need to do is change to something else for a while."
"Fight with it?" she repeated, as though the idea had been quite foreign to her. "No, I've never really thought to try that. I'm... well, I'm really small, obviously, and it always seemed like if I needed to defend myself, my magic would serve me better than anything I could do physically." She had a point. Astraia was even shorter than Khari, and where Khari had built muscle Astraia was quite thin. Slender, in the way the elves often were.
"Do you think I should?" She sounded a little daunted by the thought. "Some of the other mages do. Aurora does, but that's because, well." She made a brief punching motion, referencing the mage captain's rather unique style. As of yet Astraia didn't seem to have much of a style, save for slinging powerful spells when absolutely required, and hoping they only harmed her enemies.
“It couldn't hurt to know how, could it? If it goes well, you have an option if someone gets too close for the bigger spells to be safe. If it doesn't, it might be good exercise at least. I bet Cy knows how to use one, and he kinda seems like he needs more to do these days. Or Harellan, maybe." Khari stopped speaking for a moment to mount a ledge about as high as her chest, pulling herself up smoothly.
“And if you're good enough with a physical weapon like that, you can take people out without doing them any permanent harm. I dunno much about magic, but it seems harder to guarantee that unless you use something all defensive like Asala does." She glanced a moment at the Qunari woman, then stepped away from the ledge so the other two could climb it.
"And I don't know if I'll ever have the control to maintain anything like that." Constant, sustained spells didn't seem to be her strength, though she wasn't faring poorly at new healing techniques she was learning. "Maybe I will ask Cy." She seemed to think on it a moment longer after she said it, before nodding to herself. She certainly spent a decent amount of her time around him, often going up to his tower after she was finished at the infirmary or training with the other mages, either to read or talk or stargaze. She made no mention of Harellan, and if she thought that was as plausible.
"What about you, Asala? Anything else on your mind?" She looked back after asking the question, likely to check if Asala was able to keep up. "Should we slow down?"
Asala flashed a bright smile upon mention of her name "No, no. I am fine, thank you," she said. Despite her words, sweat was beginning to form in her hairline. She was certainly not as athletic as Khari, by far, and Astraia was Dalish--some path finding was to be expected she supposed. Fortunately, the ledge was not as tall for her as it was for the others. She put her back to it and lifted herself onto it in a seated position. Before spinning around and standing however, she extended a hand for Astraia to take. Khari was right, of course. Earth was far too blunt and powerful to be reliably nonlethal, and one needed very specific control to render someone unconscious with lightning. She certainly would not wish to risk it.
"I have not used a staff myself in quite sometime," she said, tapping the focusing crystal that hung around her neck. Instead of being embedded in a staff, Cyrus had fashioned her a necklace out of one. "Though, if you do go to see Cyrus, I would not mind accompanying you. I am afraid I have not visited as much as I should," she said with a frown. Between all of her studies and practicing with Ethne, she hadn't really found the time to visit, and thinking about it now made her feel guilty.
"Okay," she acquiesced. "I'll try to let you know ahead of time." There was something else to her words, a slight bit of unease, but whatever was behind it she kept under the surface, choosing instead to look around at their climb.
"Have you ever had to fight in a place like this, Khari? A mountainside, steep paths? I imagine that would make things difficult."
“Well, not falling off is pretty important, obviously." Khari cracked another grin. “But yeah, in a place like this, a lot of the bottleneck stuff will already be set up for you. So probably the best uses of your barriers are going to be enhancing what's already there, or creating more space for your allies. So." She clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “Can you make barriers strong enough to stand on?"