faderift | [ OPEN ] We shift and turn and swear and yearn

Entry tags:

[ OPEN ] We shift and turn and swear and yearn

WHO: Adelaide & you
WHAT: Catch All for the month
WHEN: June/Justinian
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Wine, swearing, PUPPIES, allusions to demonic violence. Prose or Brackets are fine, roll with what you like most. If you want a specific prompt hit me up on plurk @ here!

[ Courtyard -> Stables ]

When her sister wrote 'their arrival is imminent' Adelaide had not quite considered how imminent Juliette meant. Perhaps she might have been better prepared for signing off with the courier when they herd the rather rambunctious litter of several month old mabari pups to one of the few empty stalls in the barn. Playful things that they are- Dennet is a horse master not a hound master and it will be some time before the appropriate point of authority finds their way down to check on the five puppies ready for imprinting or...whatever it is these dogs do- but they will need minding until they are handed off and as she'd had the fortune to sign for them- Adelaide finds herself sitting in the barn, trying to keep the dogs from gnawing on one another, on her, or on anything valuable. Moments like this are a thorough reminder as to why she is a cat person.

[ Library ]

She can be found, as ever, at her table tucked into one of the unoccupied nooks of the library- a cold cup of tea at her elbow, a sheaf of notes she writes and reorganizes- a quill on occasion hovering over a sheet of blank paper and mimicking her notes stroke for stroke so she might produce them in duplicate. So long as she remembers exactly how she's laid out the paper, it works well enough. For questions, comments, concerns, condemnations or complications that have arisen during research she has made herself thoroughly available.

[ Return of the Attache ]

"No." That is all she has to say. No. She won't bother to stop or listen, she won't bother to mind him in the slightest- that same family attache doggedly tails Adelaide about the hold, hovering just behind with a leatherbound sheaf of papers in his hand while he awaits for some sign that she'll take them or at least listen. He spends the bulk of his time holding the odd extra book or pen or, in a singularly distressing moment, a pad of gauze against a seeping wound as she mends a patient in the healing tents. He's a step down from a personal valet- he is not meant to be dealing with literal bloody commoners and yet- this is his life. Someone please help him convince Adelaide to at least take the papers and look at them.

AFTER JUSTINIAN 19th

[ Stairs ]

After the final ritual is all said, done, and finished Adelaide finds she has a wealth of extra time due to no longer needing to spend several hours picking apart what went wrong with the last and what could go wrong with the next- and at least a few hours extra that she'd otherwise spend training with Martel in the evenings due to the incontinence that is her leg. Magic, even hers, can only do so much and the nasty break in that last fight leaves her less walking with the calm poise she's known for and more hobbling from place to place, staff less an afterthought and more a requirement for keeping her weight off her leg. At the moment she's glowering at the stones underfoot as she takes one slow, shuffling step up the stairs at a time. Her research is in the library- and eventually she would make her way there. Just- give her some time.

[ Healing Tents ]

Here, at least, there are fewer stairs. Adelaide splits her time between minding patients and beginning new notations on old research she'd set aside- tending to those she could while moving as little as possible for the first few days. Her humor is...subdued, somewhat, but that is easily explained by the weight of her work of the past months finally catching up now that she is forced to spend less time on her feet. Now and then she might be caught dozing, chin tipped to her chest, fingers still holding the page of her book in place.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And of course, almost every single day, the cold cup of tea was put aside for a hot one, and a plate of something warm and baked would be put at Adelaide's side as Bethany entered and dropped into a comfortable seat next to her, putting down her own cup of tea. Then the tray was put aside for her stack of spirit magic books.

A quiet, and warm, "Good morning Adelaide," usually followed, and then Bethany waited for the other woman to notice she was there. Sometimes it took a minute or two - sometimes she would be deep in her own notes and finished with her own baked goods before she would be startled by Adelaide finally speaking to her.

Really just depended on the day.

The first few times Adelaide might have startled at the motion, might have questioned. But now it was so much a part of her routine she thought nothing of it, offering only a murmured "Good Morning, Bethany." In reply.

Given another ten to fifteen minutes, depending on how long it took her to rouse herself from her notes, Adelaide would actually look up and register that, yes, Bethany was there and, yes, there was fresh tea. "What are we studying today?"

Bethany is twisting a curl around her finger and lifting her hand for her teacup, as she flips a page over. She blinks as Adelaide asks her question, before taking the tea firmly in hand before she sloshed it all over herself and the precious book before her.

"The making and use of the Spirit Blade -- Korrin and Madame Vivienne appear to be our two trained Knight Enchanters and I wanted to study the more warrior aspects of Spirit Magic." She makes a face as she sips - from the knowledge, not the tea, and sighs. "Honestly this is far too much front line for me - I'm no coward but I don't want to depend on my barrier and a spiritual blade to keep me from being hacked in half."

"Mmm. Are there any elements of its creation and casting you cannot apply to your spellwork?" Alternative applications were the root of many of Adelaides studies in the Spire. If such a thing was possible? It was well worth learning. "Some way they focus their energy to craft the blade- or how they make the edge quite so sharp?"

"A few, in fact. This is a much more hands on school than what I was looking for - but it is only one kind of Spirit Warrior training. There are others I can look at instead." She tapped the book, "There was one form that would allow me to cast Spirit on others blades, giving their weaponry a spiritual edge, like fire or ice."

"Then that is well worth pursuing. If you've questions- the technique is unfamiliar to me but you've an aptitude for the Spirit School and I would see such a talent fostered." Were Bethany ever trained in a circle she'd have some degree of mastery by now.

"Well, I am getting along - but learning a third school on top of the two I already know seems almost ... what's the word?" She paused, then smirked, "Arrogant? Although I suppose since I am a Warden and a Mage, I should get used to both getting tossed into the arrogant pile."

Another twist of her curl. "I will admit, this is quite different than elemental or force magics."

"Diversifying your interests." Adelaide supplied. "If you have skills in any particular branch it is wasteful not to pursue them. Some have a talent for a great many things, some but a few."

She had taught plenty of both in the Spire. Arrogance was less an indicator of the breadth of skill and more one of personality.

"That sounds a lot better than arrogant." She dimpled briefly, "I'll take it." She sat up a little bit, wincing slightly, before she sighed and flipped over a page. "If nothing else, I think all this study will be able to help me better help the possessed, or those who might be overcome by demons. A good skill to teach, if we are going to be trying young mages in the Fade, yes?"

"The fade meditative studies and tests have been coming along quite well. To my knowledge no one has struggled with them, though a few have asked after the nature of a Harrowing- some still have not quite heard the whole of it. That so many circles would keep their mages in the dark..." They were in the Spire as well, until she'd taken steps to prepare them, to inform them.

"Knowing the Chantry, they probably thought of it as the way for the mages to test their 'moral centers'. Like a Vigil for the Templars, or whatever it is the Seekers do to become Seekers. If you don't die doing this, you were meant to do this." She snorted quietly, "They seem to forget all too well that a Vigil just empties your soul - a Harrowing threatens your very existence. Or perhaps they truly never understood at all."

She put one slender finger inside of her book, looking thoughtfully over at Adelaide, "Do you think it possible they just never knew at all - because they were not mages, and could not step as we do, onto the other side of the Fade?"

"They knew enough to fear demons, to know we are at risk, and they throw us to them all the same. The degree of difficulty was different from Circle to Circle but- the more I hear of how they were handled the less I wish such a thing to be put in place. Failure in a test ought not mean death." It is a waste of so much more than life.

"Were there a way to limit one's power or risk with demons without rendering them tranquil- there are the collars of the Serabaas but- finding one would be impossible, learning how that is done would likewise be impossible, managing anything of the sort? Would cause rioting."

"You know, growing up, I had always been more afraid of being torn from my family than what the Circle actually meant." She mused, looking up at the sky. "When my father took me over to the Fade, and taught me how to control myself there - I thought, so this is how he learned. This is how someone guided him through this frightening place. He never told me he had to go it all alone. I didn't find that out until I joined the Wardens."

She looked over at the other woman, "I don't think we need to go to such limits. I think with proper education ... such a threat could be minimized."

"It varies." And that in and of itself is distressing. There is not ever one true way to teach everyone a thing- people have different skills, different tolerances for various things- to assume one could teach all is foolishness. To assume one system would work for all? Doubly so.

"There will always be someone that has more power than good sense. Someone with more ambition than they do skill, someone with more fear of who and what they are than they've control. It is a sad state of affairs- but having a means to care for them, to keep them from being a danger to themselves and those around them? That is not so unwise a thing."

"Well there has to be something above - death, or brain-death as the case may be ... " You will never convince Bethany that Tranqulity is anything less than that. The person who is there is gone. "Some way to keep those who cannot help themselves, or can and would use it against the rest of us ... under control. A capper, as it were. A stopper on the bottle of bad intentions."

"If we had that, we would not have needed the Chantry. The problem is the found the first solution and assumed it to be best." Which is faulty on so many levels, she could not even begin to explain how foolhardy that was. "We will find something. Some day we will not need to fear possession."

"My sister would have said - never go with the first solution. It's usually the one people decide on when they are pissing their pants in fear." She mused for a moment, before reaching for a cookie. "Marian always does have a good grasp on verbiage."

"She seems a remarkable woman, from what I have heard of her. It makes you no less so." A fear she'd had as a child, briefly, before she became far too different from any of her sisters to make a comparison worthwhile. That simply because they were exceptional, it made her less.

"I've never compared myself to Marian. We're two different people, after all." She smiled then, "But you're right, she is extraordinary. Only more so when you find out just how normal she is."

"Is that not the way of extraordinary people? To seem so all the more for how normal they might be?" That was what she had always thought, honestly.

"Hah, I suppose that's so! Being ordinary and then doing extraordinary things -- that's the mark of someone to be watched." She dimpled at the the thought, before sipping her tea once more. "And honestly, all I ever wanted before becoming a Warden was to be normal. Now it's all I want again - yet it's different now. Before I did not even want to be a mage. Now I want to be a mage without the binding of the Wardens over me."

"It is the duty that cannot be foresworn, yes?" There is no deserting-

Well.

Anders proved that was not quite so, but normally one did not desert. There wasn't much of anywhere one could go to avoid the marks that made them a Grey Warden, or so she'd heard.

"For various reasons, yes. But there are ways to retire, that I shall look into." There had to be a way to reverse it. She just had not found one yet.

"Truly? So Felix may not have to spend the whole of his life in the Wardens?" A life he'd never truly wanted. He had been ready to die on that bed, until they took him.

Here she paused, and here she spoke more cautiously, "I don't know ... yet. For most of us, being a Warden is what we must bear until we hear the Calling. Others die in battle before that even occurs, or from illness or otherwise. I ... am going to be searching for a way to free us from such obligations, but it will take time."

And the right resources...

Library - before the 19th

Library - before the 19th

Library - before the 19th - NERDS

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Library - before the 19th

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