faderift | Eyes black, big paws and

The Medicine Seller had a habit of turning up in unusual places quite unexpectedly, whether he was wanted there or not. This case was no different from any of the others.

By his nature, he was more sensitive to what one might call unusual things. The presence of wards piqued his interest first, but there was something else beyond that, something that resonated at the back of his throat and at the tips of his ears but he could not pinpoint what it was. Alien, like so many things in this world.

And that is why he stood outside the oak door, head tilted upwards like some animal that had caught wind of a faint and strange scent. Aside from the occasional soldier, scout or sister that pushed past, he was quite still, with only the slightest turn of his head or occasional furrowing of the brow to distinguish him from a statue.

"Might I assist you?"

Morrigan's voice carries from a few feet away, not loud but sharp, the briefest of hesitations before assist to settle on just the right word. Where before she had been what passed for friendly for most people she holds herself straighter though she holds the key. She knows she set the wards once again.

The eluvian remains secure as it can be while Corypheus stalks Thedas.

"Are you searching for something perhaps?"

He glanced over his shoulder to give only a brief nod.

"Something is... odd."

His head turned away again, this time to glance down at something in his hand. He was still, observing whatever it was he held.

"...Resonating but immeasurable."

He said it more to himself than Morrigan, though there was a muffled chime as though someone had dropped a pair of bells into his palm. This got only an exhale from him before he slipped whatever it was he was holding into his sleeves. Whatever it was, it wasn't anything his tools would pick up.

Not so reassuring an answer as she might hope for. The eluvian has been within these walls near a year now. There are those who have had to travel through it to rescue another so information on them is not kept so close as Morrigan might prefer; a new arrival hearing of them? She cannot rule it.

She does not need to confirm it so soon.

"Skyhold is a site holy to the ancient elves, to give it its proper name name, Tarasyl'an Te'las. It has drunk deep of magic, the very stones themselves are filled with it, protecting it from darkness. The arrival of so many such as you, I wonder what it awakens within it." A very brief passing wonder compared to other more urgent and relevant matters but not something to be dismissed outright. Not if you know your history the way she does.

(The way she thinks she does.)

"Does it bother you so?"

There was a long silence from the Medicine Seller as he stood there contemplating.

He had gotten a feel for the background noise that was the strange flow of power through the very walls. If he were to put it into words, it was like the difference between walking through a crowded street and standing on the edge of a whirlwind. The movement of the air was just... different.

Not that he bothered to vocalize any of this.

"...No."

Very astute.

"Tarsyl'an Ta'las," he repeated, trying not to butcher the word too badly. "Do you know more of this place when it was called that?"

"Tis a fortress that has changed hands many a time though first it belonged to the elves, built upon the site of magical rituals. From here they reached up to the heavens to bring them down to rest." Approaching the door, she sets her palm upon it because she has worked so hard for this eluvian, has nearly had it slip through her fingers in getting it here--

The wards are still there, she can feel them when she sets her palm upon the wood, spells she placed upon them months ago and renews as often as she deems necessary.

"So it is said. There is little to remember the ancient elves by, only mere fragments of what once was, what they had created. That and a language that is insufferably vague and poetic. The ancient elves abandoned it, the humans that came after abandoned it. Now the Inquisition claims it to keep us and all our works safe from the enemy."

"How does one bring down the heavens, I wonder?"

It was such a strange thing to imagine. Who would want to bring down the heavens? The sky stayed up.

His gaze followed Morrigan as she inspected the door. Perhaps if she was worried about the wards, she knew what lay beyond.

"I did not tamper with the wards, if that is what you are worried about."

He was nosy, not stupid. If wards were there, they were likely there for a good reason, and he wasn't about to set some unknown terror on a fortress to sate his curiosity just because he got a weird feeling walking past a door.

"They were capable of great feats that are forgotten to the ages now, some irretrievable, others recovered."

Such a poor way to put it. After all she had lived within their creation for years, felt the magic upon her skin so long she had given it a name when none else lived that might remember it.

She weighs it against what has been shared already within Skyhold, what might be known to some before they ever came in the first place, and someone with whom finds herself interested. "There is something kept within that room that requires such wards to keep it safe. A thing thought lost and remembered little by all though desired greatly by the enemy for the struggle required to retake it when I had it brought to Skyhold from Orlais."

Not the fondest of her memories, the Venatori, the red Templars, all of them there in the Hinterlands attacking the scouts that had been sent ahead as well as the soldiers dispatched from Orlais to get the eluvian safely from Skyhold in the first place.

"You have heard no rumours?" Not the most subtle of prompts, too direct, still too sharp in her tone but she is so used to how they buzz about her like wasps, trail after her in her wake. Here there is no buffer either to keep them from touching her son either, and the more months that pass, the more painfully she is aware of how long a shadow she might cast.

"The blood orgies seemed... far-fetched," said the Medicine Seller who had, indeed, heard a number of rumours. And while he enjoyed nothing more than a tall tale, it seemed the truth was a lot less bloody and quite a bit more interesting.

"...But nothing about what is kept past this door."

He really had just happened past and felt an unusual change in the air. The scales had become briefly alert, but he couldn't tell if it was because of the odd change or if they had sensed something else.

"It does not seem to be malevolent."

"Have you been speaking with Zevran?" It slips out unbidden, a memory of older times where the resources were fewer and the odds seemingly higher but it all came together far easier. Some of the nonsense about what mages in Circles got up to, far-fetched for him to say it now but it makes her smile to think of it.

Unhappiness has visited too many of those she knew then compared to her own life, it seems so bitterly unfair now that she finds herself in the position of caring.

But that's neither here nor there, the eluvians are an easy enough thing to learn about by now so better it comes from her mouth than another when she can control what is known, when if there are questions in the future she might clarify. (Might lie, might obfuscate, might do whatever she likes and feels is needed at the time.) "Perhaps being so new to Skyhold you have not heard, though given that you look so like some I am certain one would speak of them in time. Behind the door lies an eluvian.

"You are correct in that there is nothing malevolent about it." Well. There was one but it was connected to the Blight, the Brecilian Forest, who knows what factor was more to blame there with that eluvian. "It is a mirror, magical, of course. Different to that of Circle mages or the Tevinter Imperium. Perhaps that is what you notice about it."

"Not to my knowledge," he said. Unless Zevran was a grumbling, grizzled guardsman who made the Templars seem liberal in their stance on magic, but he had the strangest feeling that would be the last sort of person Morrigan would be on a first-name basis with.

...Just a hunch.

The corners of his lips quirked upwards a bit when Morrigan compared his appearance to that of an elf. Not that he would confirm or deny it, but it was still a bit amusing to him.

"I would assume most magic is different to what is taught in in a Circle," he said.

"Though... it is interesting that it is a mirror."

"Not even the Imperium can get away so openly with such practices, though there are tales. There are always tales. The Dalish fare the worst when they linger overlong by towns and villages." That tends to be the way of it after all, everything done to stoke paranoia, fear, ire, all designed to drive them off and far away.

As if mch of the world wasn't theirs first.

"The Circle has stripped away or forbidden many things, though they do allow work with spirits whereas the Dalish do not trust spirits, seeing no difference between them and demons." An interesting aside, and sometimes she does wonder how such things came to be when demons and abominations have happened so frequently within the Circles but the Circles often find a way to justify things. They like life in black and white after all. "They were used for communication, in the ancient days. Does it mean something to you? Them being a mirror?"

And more but she is starting with the accepted 'truth' here for those not sworn to secrecy already.

He couldn't really comment on Tevinter. It was a far away place, and as far as he knew, he'd yet to meet anyone from it. As far as he was concerned, Tevinter was words in a book to be taken with several grains of salt.

"I do not think the Dalish are entirely wrong, though perhaps not in the way they believe," he said, rubbing his chin in thought. He was still trying to work out all the similarities between this world's spirits and those from his own. Sorting out what was superstition, propaganda or just plain misunderstanding from facts was quite a task, and certainly not one that could be accomplished in a few short months by a single outsider.

"Mirrors are used for many things," he explained in that slow, occasionally halting way of his. His hand rested briefly, almost absent-mindedly on the bronze, circular pendant around his neck.

"For showing Truth. Was this Eluvian used like the crystals they give us?"

After a moment to consider, Morrigan decides it might not hurt to send him to those who do know this; she has her own attitudes. Shaped by Flemeth in no small part, by what she's been around.

"You might speak with Merrill or Ellana. Pel Ashara too though I am unsure as to when she will be indisposed. They are Dalish mages who might tell you more, should you ask." Sina she leaves out since she doesn't know the girl nearly so well and her ill health is hardly a secret throughout Skyhold. Prodding her about spirits and demons might not be the best course of action given how Morrigan first met her after all.

A raven is the form she takes for flight but she might as easily take a magpie for the way her eyes alight on every bright and fascinating thing, Morrigan makes herself look back up aat his face. "Truth can mean many things to many people, unless you have a means to strip away all pretense and lay it bare to the bone." Her voice is quiet, aware of those who may be listening or passing by and because it disturbs her in some way. To have something taken away, even the thought of it? An uncomfortable prospect in any case.

So the laugh is slightly forced when it comes. "No. A sending crystal would be so very primitive to beings such as them. Eluvians were found far and wide across Thedas, though many have been lost or destroyed entirely."

He mouthed the names, quietly committing them to memory.

"I will seek them out," he said with a small nod.

The way her eyes fell to the hand mirror and seemed to struggle to return to meeting his face again was almost as amusing to him as her statement about truth. Because she was so very right.

"Yes. There are three truths all living beings possess," he explained. "The mirror can help discern such things."

The Eluvians being more advanced than the sending crystals was an interesting anecdote - certainly something to ponder.

"Did the Eluvians have other purposes then?"

If the crystals were so primitive in comparison, that seemed a logical conclusion. Otherwise it seemed a lot of effort just to talk over long distances when a simpler method existed. But maybe the elves of long ago lacked a certain pragmatism.

There's a thought that stirs somewhere in her, the cold dark places that she could sink into deep as the swamps of her childhood. She's careful to try to keep the surprise from her face, better than she was before the Blight, before Orlais, but something slips through. The wide eyes before the almost coy smile that comes to cover for it.

"Truths such as the nature of their being? If, for instance, one was possessed? Prior to twisting into an abomination, is that the sort of truth it might reveal?"

Flemeth, always Flemeth and what her mother truly is because not a soul whispers of her unless they want to talk legends with Morrigan herself, or stories of the Blight or the Champion but the things she wants to know. Flemeth isn't truly human after all, Morrigan is sure enough of that but she cannot safely get an answer from her mother even if she ever thought she'd get anything close to one in the first place to make it worth the risk.

"The elven language that remains among the elves is that which is spoken, even among the Dalish there are few who read it. Insufferably vague, poetic in a way. Their magic and works were much the same way." When she's the one telling the tales, she'll be able to figure out if anyone else says something she doesn't want them to. Easier to trace it back and to creep up on them as a giant spider that way. "The ruins of their settlements are in far-flung corners throughout Thedas. No roads to connect them."

That-- well sometimes Morrigan wants to be clever because she does know this but do others connect the dots with details laid out just so?

"Not... prior."

It was a cold, humorless smile, and though his voice remained calm and even, there was an edge of purpose to it.

He listened attentively as Morrigan explained. True, any language could be vague, poetic and opaque as a thick fog in the right (or, depending on your perspective, wrong) hands. The Medicine Seller did not consider it a day well spent if he wasn't insufferably vague and poetic at some hapless soul at least once.

But the absence of roads between their civilizations gave far more clue to the nature of the Eluvians.

"They are doors," he stated, uncharacteristically abrupt.

"A method to detect or reveal them then? There are some who go about as easily as you or I might yet others...ruined flesh, twisted and misshapen. A thing that haunts the dreams of those who see them."

Not a thing she would expect from a medicine seller, if that is what he is. She has her doubts. A person can be so many things all at once. What heals harms in the right amount, and she knows what Wynne could do as a spirit healer, that Bruce had walked the world as a surgeon to hide that he was a mage.

That he says it so abruptly is-- well there were so few who knew, content to have any small pieces of the past, willing to take her at her word (she the arcane advisor, she the companion to the Hero of Ferelden, she the daughter of Flemeth better known to them as Asha'bellanar) and it's a thing she isn't sure what to do with. Like a cat who finds its fur rubbed the wrong way, attempting to sort it lest someone see it.

"Yes." There's a reluctance to attempt the lie here when they've talked about mirrors, when someone has guessed at it and correctly at that. "No others in Skyhold have come to the correct conclusion alone. Our enemy has attempted to take mine and to have another shattered one repaired after we retrieved a second. Given his particular delusions and aspirations, one can imagine such doors would be useful to him."

The wording is careful. Others in Skyhold know. They simply didn't come to the conclusions in Skyhold. So. Not directly a lie.

"It helps reveal certain truths so that the sword may be drawn," he explained. "There other tools to discern the location of a Mononoke."

He paused, staring up absentmindedly at the roof, still as a statue until he seemed to, at last, return to reality.

"Ah. Forgive me. Abominations."

He wasn't partial to the term if the way he practically hissed the word was any indication.

Still, he was pleased he'd come to the right conclusion. Morrigan answering his prior question with a vague statement about an absence of roads left him with only a few possible ideas, however.

"You gave a good clue. Is one mirror connected to another?"

"We have few such tools. Templars might use a phylactery for a mage if they have their blood, a tool for hunting down escaped Circle mages before the Circles fell. Is it always the sword where you are from?"

The Litany was a rare thing, preventative but then there are other places with their own traditions, their own ways of doing things. Perhaps there are methods the Inquisition might learn from elsewhere and one day Thedas will be the better for it.

Unlikely.

"Tis what many become when one is taught fear - when the demons come, she will have no strength in her to deny them and then she is no longer her own." Arguably that's the abominable part but you'd be hard-pressed to find many souls in Thedas who would agree to such a line of thinking.

Sighing through her nose, she gives her answer flatly. "No." And yes. In a manner of speaking. "No longer. That would be entirely too simple, fortunately and unfortunately for us all."

"No. There are many ways."

He might have remarked about how there are many ways to skin a cat if he didn't find the phrase too ironic to contemplate, and twice as distasteful.

Still, he had a playful side and decided to give Morrigan a bit of a riddle of his own.

"But a sword's purpose is not always to kill."

And at last, some truly interesting information on the force of nature that was Corypheus.

"To possess a quick way around would be a boon to either side."

"T'would imply understanding or the attempt."

A change from here where so much is so limited. Says she though she feels entitled given all she has seen, all she has worked with, all she has accomplished thus far in her life. Morrigan, after all, slips her skin and copies the soul of another creature.

"Much depends on the hand that holds it, whether or not it stays sheathed. A sword is a symbol of many a thing, to some a sword is peace, to another tis the end." Everything depends on how you slice it.

"If you are able to know where you are going. There is a truth rarely spoken too, in part since it comes from a Dalish clan, and for it concerns eluvians of how an elf died caught sick from the Blight and was lost. So it goes." By the way, that eluvian is hanging out here too.

There was a soft huff that passed for a chuckle from the Medicine Seller.

"Understanding, yes. The three truths must be understood before it can be drawn."

The rule may have seemed arbitrary to some, even impractical, but the Medicine Seller had his reasons.

"The Blight seems to afflict many things if even mirrors can catch it."

"How great an understanding is required?"

Morrigan doesn't always trust what passes for 'understanding' when it comes to some. She's met Templars after all.

"A Blight...A Blight blackens the land enough that the ground itself festers. Beasts are driven mad and some became tainted same as men or elves or dwarves might; wolves become blightwolves, bears turn to bereskarns, spiders into corrupted spiders, hideous twisted creatures. Blights have lasted many decades in the past, they have driven the world to the brink." The memory of the Fifth Blight, however brief it was, turns her voice sharper. It had been a terrible time to see the darkspawn, to smell them, to hear their laughter before they rushed out of wherever they had hidden. "Towards the end the sky itself turns dark to allow the horde to advance more easily by day."

"The Mononoke- the Abominations- such beings do not come into existence by accident. Though it is a spirit that finds them, they are fed by the fates of men."

He doubted he needed to say it directly - they were often born from atrocities committed by people and spurred by those actions into some twisted, grotesque. If one were to put down something that was once a person, those things should be brought to light first.

"Three things must be made known. Katachi. Makoto. Kotowari. The Form, Truth, and Regret."

And yet again, Morrigan had little morsels of information that the Medicine Seller found to be of interest.

"The sun causes them some trouble, hmm? In that case, I may have something you will find useful."

Eyes black, big paws and

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