[closed-ish] fearless on my breath

[eolasemah]

WHO: Sina, Pel, and Velanna + any reactions others might have
WHAT: Freaky druid shit
WHEN: Before dawn on some day in Solace
WHERE: The ex-chantry garden, Hightown
NOTES: It was planned such that no one else would be here to see,
but please feel free to react to and speculate on the end result!

The sky has only slightly begun to grey by the time the three mages have assembled themselves in the struggling garden, two on each end and Sina in the center. Each has four small diffusers, humbly constructed for the purpose of burning herbs and bearing no special decoration, and within each container is a crumbling of dried royal elfroot. These are positioned around the three with a ritualistic precision, making each of them the center of a compass.

Bearing no flame magic, Sina lights her easterly diffuser using a match, waiting until the other two have followed suit before moving onto north, and around until they're all steaming. Then, with a solemn glance in both directions, she closes her eyes and presses her palms to the ground.

The silence prevails, no birds or even nighttime insects cutting the darkness as a faint greenish glow begins to thrum from beneath Sina's hands, spreading with the slow certainty of pooling blood. It grows wider and wider, until, with a small nod, Sina signals the other two. Their task is to bolster it, to feel the magic their younger cohort generates and push it to all corners of the garden.

What Velanna and Pel don't have, and what they don't realize Sina does have, is a small and inconspicuous length of brambles beneath her hands. They drive into her thin palms, increasing the strength of the spell through the inevitable result of sharp points against skin.
Sina is strong with magic, and this is her area of greatest expertise. But sometimes one's best efforts aren't enough.

Comments

[mythalenaste]

Pel's braids are pinned into a spiral bun, completely and fully out of the way so all her efforts go undistracted. She wears trousers and a short tunic and bears her staff only. The baby is with Cyril. Everything is taken care of.

Working the magic from Sina is like controlling the flow of a stream of water, bending it, working it into eddies, and sending each toward a place in need of it. It feels every bit as natural as spinning fibers into yarn and twine, both magic and hearthcraft things she learned almost since she could walk and talk. The magic pouring from Sina is great, a flood Pel never could have hoped to create herself, but she feeds it, another source in this great river of life-magic. Sina herself is the river and the land that cradles it. The Chantry fears that mages can cause unimaginable death with their powers; they should fear as much the terrible power mages have over life. Feeding, planting, growing, thriving. Whole civilizations rise and fall based on the fertility of their soil. That is the true power of a mage; not mass death, but limitless life.

outside, night

[nadasharillen]

With her back to the outer wall, Nari keeps a silent vigil. Despite her fears, she'd only had to stare down one night-time scavenger, doggedly searching the area for anything forgotten by previous looters. The rest of the time there was nothing.

As she'd promised her clansister, the hunter could neither see nor hear the magical goings on, although as the sun slowly lightens the eastern sky, Nari can't help but smell the strengthening perfume of the riot of flowers on stem and branch alike that surge into being behind the ex-chantry walls. She smiled lightly. Whatever it was, it was working.

She began to whistle quietly, now waiting not for adversaries, but for whatever spell or rite or incantation to finish, so she might be of some aid.