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From:

[ How do you know a mage isn't from the South? You know because she says something like: ]

What is an Abomination, exactly?

From:

inkindled

[Right. Having someone ask that, so baldly--it's strange.]

It's when you get possessed, by a demon. You're alive and you can see what you're doing but you haven't got any control. And outside you looks like you, and sound like you, but it's the demon and it's moving you like a puppet. It happens when-- when you're weak.

From:

incaenstrix

[ A blink of surprise. ]

I thought that - if a demon caught you, you died.

[ She has, it seems, been misinformed. ]

From:

inkindled

You do, at the end. Either 'cos someone kills you or gets the demon to rip its way out of you. But there's a bit before, a long bit sometimes, where you're still alive.

Did they teach you about this? I know you weren't in a Circle, like--but you were somewhere. And you had magic.

Edited Date: 2022-09-30 12:27 am (UTC)

From:

incaenstrix

They -

[ A slight hesitation. ]

They taught me a few things. Like - Yeah. If I was in the Fade, and I saw a demon, I had to run away from it, because it'd kill me right away. Which I guess...isn't true, exactly.

From:

inkindled

Not exactly. Not exactly untrue, either, I s'ppose.

[But still.]

What else did they teach you, then?

From:

incaenstrix

Well…How to read. Sort of. And then they left me with a few books about magic, and brought me out to practice every now and again. I just learned to do the basic spells - fire and lightning, that’s it. I think maybe they thought if I exercised my magic it’d be useful, but they didn’t want me to do it too much.

From:

inkindled

'Cos you might use it against them?

From:

incaenstrix

Yeah. ‘Cause I’d have killed them if I could.

[ Maybe. Maybe not. At first she’d been so grateful for the luxury and soft living, and - she’d been timid, back then. ]

From:

inkindled

Yeah.

[When Matthias thought of Tevinter, before--it was dark, but with a silver thread. Mages were in charge. Whatever else could be said of it, there was that. He rubs his thumb against the edge of the desk. It's been worn smooth by years, people bumping their forearms against it. Maybe mages before him, mages who were here at the Gallows.]

That was almost clever of them. 'Cos you would have, and they knew that.

What was the first bit of magic you ever did?

From:

incaenstrix

[ A little intake of breath in response to the question. It’s a gentler topic. Easier. ]

I don’t - really remember.

[ There’s still a bit of smothered intensity in her voice. ]

But the first time I really knew it was magic, for sure - I was cold, and I wanted to be warm, so - fire sort of happened.

From:

inkindled

Practical.

[He's a little charmed, still, not half because,] Fire was my first bit of magic as well. I was showing off. Yours is better.

I used to wonder--well, I still do, I s'ppose--if it means anything, what you do first. Like if it says something about you.

From:

incaenstrix

Like - we're both fiery? Or maybe warm?

From:

inkindled

Erm. Maybe.

D'you think of yourself as warm?

From:

incaenstrix

I try to be. The world's nasty enough without us being nasty in it, right?

From:

inkindled

Oh. Well, yeah. I s'ppose that's true. It is. That's-- nice, besides. I hadn't thought of it that way, for me, anyways. I think about fire being hot and the way it-- Well, I don't think of myself as being nasty. But I have to fight a lot. That's what I think of.

From:

incaenstrix

Do you think that's what you would have been like if it weren't for - [ You know. ] Everything?

From:

inkindled

Maybe. I dunno.

Well, actually--has anyone told you about the sort of things that come up, in Riftwatch? As in, the sort of... problems, we have to deal with?

From:

incaenstrix

Um - Fighting the Venatori, right?

From:

inkindled

Yeah. But then there's other things, right, that happen in between. Other battles and things and other missions. And once it was like, I dunno. Almost like a dream, of different ways time could have been. If that makes any sense at all. And we've had it where it was like that, like a dream, but of the way the future might be.

But once, one of those times, I thought I wasn't a mage at all. I stayed living in the village where I was born. And I wasn't anything, then. So I think... I dunno. For me, I think that's what magic is like. If I didn't have it, I dunno what I would be. Like when you're in the snow and it gets dark and you build a fire and stay close to it. If you went out where it's dark, and cold, you'd get undone, right? If you didn't have a fire, or you didn't know how to make one, you'd be more lost, even.

From:

incaenstrix

I've never seen snow.

[ But that's a little beside the point. Just something she's saying as she thinks about it. ]

But - what do you mean that you weren't anything?

From:

inkindled

Poor, like. My parents weren't even proper farmers. I was something, right, I were a person still, but I wasn't here.

From:

incaenstrix

Is that so bad?

[ Thoughtfully: ]

It might be nice, living a life with no war. I don't know if that was what your dream was like. But if it was, that wouldn't be so bad, right?

From:

inkindled

[Matthias looks down at his hands. Under the ink stains are old scars. He rubs the pad of his thumb against each fingertip in turn, feeling the armored callouses.]

Maybe. I mean, yeah, I s'ppose.

[He isn't all that good at casually lying. Even he can hear the doubt in his voice. So he pushes past it--]

Anyway, Riftwatch is fairly brilliant, even if there's a war on. Better'n other situations. For starters, you get paid.

From:

incaenstrix

[ How curious. Even among the People of the Silent Plains, the general attitude was war is hell, even though we're doing good work. It's odd to hear someone who so clearly doesn't believe that. - Or maybe it's not that he feels a love for the war, but just for trying to free his people? That she does understand. ]

I've never used money before. It seems sort of complicated.