faderift | closed. send out the morning birds to sing of the damage,

Entry tags:

closed. send out the morning birds to sing of the damage,

WHO: Martel, Adelaide LeBlanc.
WHAT: Comparative magical theory.
WHEN: Vaguely current/recent.
WHERE: Skyhold Garden.
NOTES: Martel is a warning, but if anything specific comes up, I will edit.

Having returned from his adventure down the Frostbacks with the Orlesian elf girl (and her thrice-damned horse), Martel - does not immediately seek out Adelaide's company. He does not, as a rule, seek out company. Much less immediately. There is enough as needs doing that can or must be done by him that though he has had it in mind to do for a time, it's been...not urgent. While other things - he did not miss the Abomination, no - have been.

Still. He finds her in the garden, unhurried as he descends the steps, observing her. The way that she moves, stiff and deliberate; it is a moment before he announces himself, and not with a greeting--

"It seemed to me that as I have made myself a part of this organisation, I might make myself available to some of the relevant parties as to what uses I can be put to," not quite dryly, just sort of - as Kalten once put it, you know how he is. Martel talks a certain way, it's a problem with his personality.

And as for relevant parties, there are a few, potentially. But the simplest place to start is with the mages, and he and Adelaide are...

...acquainted.

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Cut away the dead plants, spread the fresh shoots, add a little power, move along. With so much of the dirt charred and the plants uprooted they would be short their expected stock for the time it would take to replace them. Adelaide denies that fixing this is any a form of penance even if she and at least her older students consider that the case. They failed. She failed. Cleaning the mess they'd made is the least she can do- unless, of course, she is interrupted.

Adelaide sits back, carefully, resting on her heels in the dirt as she peers over at Martel. "That depends."

Dry. Cold. Formal, though through no fault of his own. It is simply how she is attempting to cope. "How is it you would wish to be used?"

Forbearing to take the cheap, obvious opening, he continues across the garden to stand - not too close. Close enough for ease of conversation, albeit potentially a bit too close to make eye contact without neck strain. It would be easy to be irritated, but it would be easy, too, not to feel obliged to look up while they speak. She scarcely seems in the mood, and were he bothering to be as polite as he is perfectly capable of being, he might come again another time.

But since he's already here, his concessions are easily disguised.

"If that has any bearing on the matter, I will be surprised," he says, instead, dryly. "But it seemed to me a locally educated mind ought to know something about the sorcery that I'm trained in. You'll see quicker than I will where I might fill a gap."

Supplement, support - Martel is not, somewhat conspicuously after spending any time at all in his company and drawing the conclusions it tends to lead to, positioning himself for glory. He's made his presence known from time to time when Dorian Pavus walks young mages through combat - he's made himself aware of the Council of Magi, offered opinions when asked.

For the most part, though, he's - waited. Watched. Considered, and ... as he says, filled gaps.

Tilt her head and draw tight the skin yet burned- or resume work and trust he won't be offended. Martel has not often seemed one to demand attention- command it when he deigned to speak? Certainly. Demand- not as much. If she were to choose a word for the rifter's usual means and posture she'd be tempted to choose 'lurk' or 'skulk', though less in the way of one meaning to be stealthy and more in the way of a cat that ignores everything and everyone other than what it wishes to see or have notice it.

Multitasking it is, and she turns to resume untangling the roots of the plant she'd been minding when he called her attention to him. She can listen and speak at the same time (gasp), it is not beyond her.

"Again, that depends on where your strengths lie in your sorcery. I doubt you have the same four schools of magic that seem more or less universal in Thedas in your world, and while normally I'd ask you to demonstrate here and now is..." She motions to the devastation yet under repair. "Neither the time nor the place. But talk me through how your sorcery is performed. The fact that it can simply be learned by anyone that wishes to put in the work and study is...baffling to me."

Adelaide is not wrong in her assessments; Martel might even find the comparison amusing. (He's never cared for dogs.)

"So I've gathered," he says, casting his gaze dispassionate over the garden. The damage done, her efforts to redress it. "Granted - the study and the work are not available to anyone who wishes it. For an Elene like myself, there are two paths - one, if you're a woman. You can join one of the holy mother church's four knighthoods, and learn the essential basics whether it pleases you to or not, or you can very expensively coax what you wish to know out of a Styric more concerned with the gold than the state of anyone's immortal soul."

Being something of an overachiever, it must be said, Martel has tried his hand at both of these.

But the way he learned is not the point, and he exhales.

(He will probably have to tell her something, on that - there are answers he can give without lying, he thinks.)

"Innovation is my specialty. I am curious to know how something works, and what else it might do - it's been centuries since we fought the wars that behooved Chyrellos to teach its sons to fight fire with fire. Many knights would struggle to light a candle, much less integrate sorcery with battle. My studies were extensive because the subject interested me for its own sake. You might describe me as an academic sorcerer; I am capable of battle magic, but I am far more likely to use spells that enhance what I might do without it. I taught myself your lettering with sorcery. I can recreate an image or an entire book I've but glanced at - conjure objects. Not summon, necessarily, but form from a substance. Keep myself awake and alert longer than is sensible. I could weave protections, triggers to alert me. Minds here are closed to me,"

almost thoughtfully, that last,

"as they were not, in Eosia. I've discovered limitations here as well as new freedoms, interestingly. I believe that it has to do with what your gods already think of as ... acceptable bending of reality. I felt that library visit for days afterwards, nearly bled from the eyes doing it in the first place." A slight exaggeration - just. He'd looked like shit when she'd first found him there, but of course, there had been other, obvious explanations for why.

"You are going to have to elaborate on a few of these terms for me. Elene, Styric, Chrellos, Eosia. Are these races, kingdoms...?" A beat. "Why is it that magic becomes tied up quite so neatly with religion? Here it is 'damn the magic, lock up the mage, kill them if they become a danger. For you they are fostered. I do not suppose there is quite the same risk of becoming possessed by a demon in practicing your magic, is there?"

The ability to heal, to cast, to simply BE without that hanging over her head. That would be a marvel. And yet attaining it, the very idea of doing so, feels wrong. And if not wrong, it feels impossible. Either due to her upbringing or some twisted sense of balance instilled in her by the Spire it does not seem quite right. Perhaps there are costs of which she is unaware- especially if one is able to use said magics to conjure, to read the mind of others. Much of what he says feels like shades of familiar research, things she has known, things she can do- save for the last.

"The reading and warping of minds falls to the realm of Blood Magic which is taboo in a great many ways- dangerous for a great many others, and forbidden by the Inquisition Council of Magi for the dangers it poses. Increased risk of possession, calling demons, etc." She would shrug normally but the tension in her shoulders wouldn't allow for it. "But that you can learn our written word so quickly with your magic is fascinating. How precisely did you do that?"

Upon consideration - Martel sits, finally, just out of the way of her continuing work in the garden. For as fastidious as he can be, he doesn't make a fuss - ostentatious or subtle - about lowering himself into the grass and dirt. It's like as not that much of that to-the-manor-born way of his is an affect, a memory; he has lived too much and too hard to have kept those sensibilities so close to him.

He speaks the language, but it isn't his, any more.

"Let me start at the beginning," he says, after a moment, with a glimmer of humour. That is a great many questions in succession, and it seems as if perhaps they're best answered not singularly but with their context, as she requests it. (Though he'd briefly shaken his head, when she spoke of possessions. The risks of practising sorcery are, by and large, created by the sorcerer - magic didn't make him the monster he became.)

"Eosia is a continent. There are two - Eosia, from whence I came, and Daresia. You will find Elenes in four Elenic nations of Eosia - Arcium, the southernmost of us, home of the Cyrinic Knights. Elenia, of the two central Elenic nations and my homeland. Pandion Knights. Deira, to the north, with the Alciones. Thalesia, the northernmost of us, with the Genidians and the damned trolls. Knights of these four Orders have a dispensation from the Church of Chyrellos, the so-called Free City and the seat of the Elene faith, to practise what in the hands of any other Elene or, indeed, the Styrics to whom it belongs, is considered heretical witchcraft potentially punishable by death."

He is not a boy, any more, easily swayed by his own emotions; he does not reach for the medallion. But perhaps she might remember it - it hangs quite visibly beneath his shirt - and his appallingly strong reaction to the thing when he says,

"I was a Pandion Knight. It isn't ordinarily something one stops being; I had a crisis of faith." Not untrue. "Were I still beholden to Elenia's laws or had I not been excommunicated and therefore no longer subject to the Archprelate, my every spell would be an act of heresy. Possibly," thoughtfully, "treason."

Arguably. He hardly needs to argue it when he committed so many more explicit forms of the same.

A shrug that slightly favours his shoulder; "Do you sing, Adelaide?"

It isn't a change of subject.

Before he'd had half her attention, part of her focus twisted in the roots of the plants she attempts to save. As he brings himself down to her level, as he speaks of home? Her eyes slip to him while her hands continued their work- following the tangle and ache of the plant by feel. After so many in the day tended to already it is simple enough work. What he is saying, however, is not.

Before the Spire she'd been starving for knowledge, real knowledge. How things worked and why, the larger moves of the game rather than the petty intricacies of individual conversations. In the Spire? She'd glutted herself on what there could be learned of countries and magics and the Fade. Condensing it, dispensing it taught her all the more- if one didn't know what they were doing, however could they hope to teach? With the Inquisition's library woefully bereft of anything that might be of use new sources of worthwhile information are, sadly, difficult to find. For Martel to be so free with what he knows sparks something she'd thought stamped out in the terrified sprint from the Spire.

Her eyes flick from his face to his chest, that medallion. Ah. His initial reaction makes a bit more sense, now.

Not so much that she'd forgive it entirely, but enough that she's all the more willing to put it behind them.

"When I've wine and occasion enough, yes." A beat. "Is singing relevant to your magics- or the theory thereof?"

"You are a mage the way that you are a woman, innate to you, something that you learn to wield but not something that you must claim for yourself," he says, easily, leaning back on his hands in the grass. "I am a sorcerer in the same way that I sang for the choir. Some of the men I trained with scraped through their lessons with Lady Sephrenia and never cast a spell again after - others found they'd a knack for it, a talent. Anyone can theoretically be a sorcerer in the same way that anyone can theoretically learn to sing,"

with a hint of humour,

"practically speaking, we all know some of them simply can't be helped."

"I cannot imagine how it would change Thedas were that the case." No threat of possession, no towers- colleges instead. What they should have been rather than what they were at the end. Pretty academic prisons to keep the dangers locked away. For them to be anything else- for magic to be a choice rather than something innate...

It is impossible here, but for a moment she cannot help but wonder if she'd choose to be what she was were the option available. If she could have done without.

"Innovation, you said. How were you able to use your innovative magic to learn our written language- and on that note which written language did you learn? There are a great many."

"It's a combination of spells I've previously used to the purpose - one to reproduce an image or a written word once seen, and one to learn to speak an unfamiliar language. Used in tandem, combining the two spells into one with a subtle adjustment, allows the mind to absorb the meaning of the words that you are reproducing - in essence, I wrote until I knew what of I wrote. I began with the written word as it corresponds to the language we're speaking now - it simplified the process, that I already understood that."

It's easy to understand only by speaking to him a short while that Martel never would have chosen anything else - that even as he's admitted his practise of magic is now essentially a legal and religious offense, he could no more have left it be. He speaks with too much passion and interest for his subject; the idea of letting knowledge pass him by is absurd. He has pushed the limits simply because they were there to be pushed. He will always be interested, and ambitious, and warm to his subject when given the opportunity to speak on it.

It suits him, the way he is when he discusses his work like this. He forgets to be so much of a bastard when he's engaged in explaining something worthwhile to someone who can keep up with the explanation.

"The enchantment forms are a kind of stylised prayer ritual - ordinarily, the guiding hand of a patron god rests upon the sorcerer. I've discovered that this is not strictly necessary; I know that I am alone here."

That his gods have left him here. He says it very matter of fact; he is not looking at her, when he does. There's a set to his jaw that does not linger when he smiles and says, "I suppose I'm relearning my limits, now they're not imposed on me by someone else. How much of what I do now is to do with adjusting to your world and how much of it is adjusting to the lack of guidance will be difficult to say with complete confidence, but I do think that the rules here being so different is altering my results. I'm changing my expectations accordingly."

"That is a great deal more abstract than what we are able to manage here. Conjuring an image of something seen is a matter of illusions, easily done with the right training, but the second- where does that knowledge come from? It must come from somewhere if not your own mind." Everything has a source. In Thedas it is the fade and it's spirits, it's power, it's demons. Knowledge comes from study and sacrifice and compromise; not from a spell.

There is no glyph for knowing. It'd make her a bit obsolete were that the case. "Unless- Here, I suppose, such a thing could be done if one called upon a spirit of Knowledge but they are few, far between, and at my last count all but a myth. There may have been a great deal but no mage I know of now has seen nor heard of them. Wisdom, yes, knowledge? No. But it follows that if there is the one there ought to be the other; calling them by name might offer an approximation but if you were able to do that- I would know." Sorcerer he may be- spirit mage he is not. There's a tone to Martel to be certain- but it is not familiar in any way.

"Much like how I heal with Compassion. Through their guidance and power I am able to do more than I would otherwise." But to connect with a god? That is...fascinating and terrifying. "Without your patron you will be pulling either from the Fade or from yourself for power. Mages here do a bit of both unless they use the power of Spirits as well as their own will. I'd recommend strongly against overcasting simply to see how much you can manage while testing your limitations- the migraine afterward isn't worth it."

"I didn't do so intentionally," he says, a bit dryly, amused at himself - and at her instinct to guide him as she might her students. It reminds him of something he does not care to examine. "I'm afraid I learned that lesson rather quickly after arriving with the trick in the library. It served its purpose, but I'd have been better served if I'd been better prepared, instead of committing and realising halfway through I'd bitten off more than I intended."

He waves that aside - he is learning. Adapting. And doing it more carefully now he's a notion of how much there is to adapt from.

"Sorcery can be used to ... it's essentially drawing upon existing awareness. So, perhaps, the Fade of yours is what I tapped into to do it - my tutor, Lady Sephrenia," whose name softens the harshness of him the way someone might speak of their beloved mother, "discussed with me once the problem with using such a shortcut. It isn't true understanding. If I had learned Styric the same way, I'd not be able to practise sorcery as I do, it lacks the nuance of truly grasping something that you've learned, that you've worked at. To cast in Styric I must think in Styric."

"I had a student, once, with a disturbingly accurate memory for all that he read and heard. Most of his other instructors thought him a savant, someone that should undergo their harrowing early for he had so much talent- save that his actual grasp of what he'd read was lacking in depth. He knew what he had read and been told, but applying what he'd absorbed was difficult. We had to go back to the beginning for him to relearn everything in such a way that he might be able to comprehend. He spent an extra two years in my tutelage and hated me thoroughly." But he left her instruction knowing better than to trust the shortcut his own mind provided, and went on to become an Enchanter in his own right.

Of course, when the Spire fell, he died along with many of her peers but- that is neither here nor there.

"Knowledge is only worth how it might be applied. If you don't understand it, you cannot apply it. At least with writing the application is simple enough for you to learn, comprehend, and use it without causing yourself migraines with each attempt."

"Precisely. I used it to allow myself the opportunity to study it more closely - I arrived here blind, and it was a quick way to begin fixing that state of affairs. I'd perhaps have handled it differently if I'd waited longer, if I'd known more - but I knew little."

A verbal shrug. There'd been pressure, in those early days; the suspicion that still lingers now had been much sharper. He'd loathed being so helpless, and it had been the only way forward that he could see. Educate himself. Learn about the world he needed to be able to navigate. It was a start that he's built on - but not the easy fix that it seems at first glance.

After a moment, "I'd likely have become the Order's Lord Preceptor, had I remained on the path I was. I'm getting old," with a wry look, "and I don't have a particular desire to cover myself in glory on the battlefield any more. Your young mages need to learn to defend themselves - in battle and socially, I expect. If I were to suggest a use for myself, it'd be that."

"We do need more instructors- we've more apprentices than we've tutors at the moment and while you cannot teach them magic as they know it...a way to protect themselves when they cannot use magic- for that will happen no matter how well prepared they think they are- and protecting their reputation from a world already terrified of them are more than worthwhile." A beat and she turns to look at him properly, eyes faintly narrowed.

It is a long moment of consideration, the younger mages all well within the range of her own students. All eager to please. All quite impressionable.

"Provided you can hold your temper and your reflexes and give me your word that you shan't have an incident such as when we first met during training and I shall put forth your offer to the Council, as well as give it my blessing."

"A combat tutor who understands magic and its practise, even of a different sort, is likely to be better received than one they might be afraid of, or fear judgement from," he observes, blandly. "And a novelty is like as not to get cooperation simply for the sake of being a novelty."

Martel, hip with the youth of today.

But at her more serious mien -

He takes his time. He's never been gifted with apologies, or explaining himself - he's very rarely tried to do either. He has no desire to brush her off and leave her thinking his offer is a conditional or irresponsible one, and it means handling it delicately and deliberately. He isn't self-conscious about taking a moment to order his thoughts; it will speak better of him than speaking in haste, he thinks. Let her see that her words hit their target.

"When we met," he says, finally, "I believed I was in hell. I was exhausted physically, mentally and magically, I was afraid, I knew myself to have been abandoned by my gods and cast out among people who thought I was a demon. My loss of control was unforgivable, but it is not something that will happen again. For what it's worth, you've my word."

He doesn't say on my honour. How much of that has he left?

"You thought yourself dead." The wound, the knotted, gnarled mess of it that she had mended, the manner in which he fell? A sword's blow through the chest. She knows wounds well enough to know when something is possible to walk away from and when someone ought to be bleeding their last in the mud. Had he not fallen through the rift, there is no doubt in her mind that he would be in the 'hell' he describes.

Even if such a thing, to her, isn't terribly familiar. The sentiment is.

But she gauges him for a moment more. Weighs what is and is not said- the way in which it is spoken. How he holds himself, how he doesn't fidget or grimace or scowl. He simply is as he speaks his piece. Offers no tells to the truth of them but considering the incident in question she cannot think him anything but perfectly sincere, if not entirely contrite.

For her it is enough.

"Then we are in agreement." She dusts her hands clean of dirt and extends one to him, as such things are often shaken upon in some way or another.

His hand is calloused but clean besides the impressions of grass, warm, and his grip strong; not overbearing. The problem with Martel, so often, is that he is not the grasping thing people want a man with his ego to be - to see that truly it hides some insecurity that they can use to either condemn or humanize him. He isn't, though - he rarely feels the need to assert himself, and never in casual exchanges with acquaintances.

He is. And what he is will be seen or not. It changes him not at all.

"We are," as he lets go of her hand.

Eventually, "I would have been dead."

She knows. He knows she knows. But it is worth saying out loud. This is borrowed, precious time that he will not waste.

Her fingers are warmer than they ought to be, her skin soft- side effects of using magic to literally heal the plants with nudges of power. For a moment she's reminded vividly, viscerally of a templar she'd known in the Spire.

The thought is there and gone before she can dwell on it overlong.

"If a way is found to return rifters to their home- is it a safe enough assumption to make that you would rather not?" Either for his own reasons or the complications that comes of not dying when one truly ought.

"I led a remarkably full life," he says, and it has the tone of a bleak private joke at his own expense, a glimpse of that ugliness that always seems to lurk at the edges of him, "and it ended. As such things do."

He shakes his head, briefly, glancing at nothing in particular on the other side of the garden.

"No, I've no desire. That world is done with me and I am done with it. They may write the history of the matter as pleases them."

"Is that often the way of things? The living write over the bodies of the slain? I think there was a popular opera in Orlais that held that as a core theme." If art is made of it, there must be some truth- or something to that effect. She sits back and considers him for a long moment- the way he spoke of it, the injury in question, the way he spoke of home and his magic-

There is a story to be told.

One she has no desire to hear of, not yet. "Tell me more of your sorcery."

It seems the safest subject.

A dead man's story no longer belongs to him - if the story of the renegade Martel had ever been his own. Martel lets it pass, though, in favour of the more interesting and rather less dire inquiry about sorcery. That subject he can speak on for hours at a time, and more gladly.

"I began studying it as a boy - I was sent to the Pandion motherhouse to begin my novitiate," he says, relaxing by increments. "Lady Sephrenia has served as the Styric tutor for the knighthood for centuries. It's not unusual for a sorcerer or sorceress to live longer than is usual - you're given a connection to the world that the average person cannot imagine. What you referred to before, blood magic... I don't know that we have anything comparable. When I listened to the minds of those around me, it was a natural extension of being so attuned. A simple thing, not very complex, the skill of the sorcerer the benchmark for their ability to listen well or not."

After a slight pause, "It's a foolish man who reaches out blindly. Sorcery is not...discreet. To those who know what they're hearing, it makes a noise; unique to each caster, but distinct for what it is."

"Listening, warping. A common practice of meleficar is to make pacts with demons or create blood thralls- ensnare the mind of someone they use for their blood's power rather than their own. Spirits may sense an individual's intention but outside of the Fade I cannot think of anything but a spirit or demon that could read the mind of those on this side of the veil." In theory it might be possible, much as living for so long might be possible. Unwise for the deals one would have to make in order to do so- for no mage might manage such a feat of their own power.

The last bit- though. That their magic comes with it's own sound- that piques her interest. "Magic is not subtle here, either. You have seen it at work- all storm or flame or ice or spirits warping through this side of the veil. But some mages- spirit mages in particular, to me have a sound to them. Most magic does. I do not know if this is something of spirit mages, something of mages, or something of my own. What does it sound like to you?"

"A bell," he says, thoughtfully, "most of the time."

Not always. But - often enough to be the most common.

"A sorcerer might 'hide' the sound of his work in a few ways - in the midst of a great deal of such noise, for instance, or beneath the binding cover of iron. But for the most part..." He makes an easy gesture. "If someone is listening and I don't care for them to hear me, I simply don't give them anything to listen to."

"Voices singing. I do not understand the language but I do not need to." Sometimes it's an echo of the mage's own voice- more often than not a murmur of whatever spirit they channel. If there are no spirits involved it's more of a low thrum, rippling through Compassion to her awareness, echoed on each side of the veil.

She snorts a soft laugh, murmuring with something that could be approval. "Practical."

"Do you hear anything of our magic- or is it too different?"

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