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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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?"

"I'm aware of it, but not in the way I would've been in Eosia," he says, with a tilt of one hand. "The rules here are different - the way that things work. That I can still do anything here is something of a pleasant surprise, I expect to be adapting for some time. It sounds...further away."

He lacks the connection to Thedas that he had to his own world; as much as he might assimilate, he's never going to be permitted to forget he doesn't belong here.

There are worse things. He will learn to live with it.

"The - preoccupation with spirits and demons is an unusual thing," he observes, after a moment, "in comparison to what I'm accustomed to. Of course we've all summoned a spirit for some task, and there are rumours of necromancers here and there...demon-summoning is forbidden. It isn't something you can do by accident. It isn't a risk that you have to take into account with anything you do that isn't purposeful demon-summoning."

"We've a whole nation of necromancers to the north- Nevarra. Necromancy is their specialty. it ties deeply with their culture of mages." She laces her fingers together in her lap, sitting straight, not quite an orator's posture for she was sitting in the dirt as much as he- but something practiced that held shades of her old authority. "It's not so much a preoccupation as it is a required awareness. Demons can possess mages if we are not strong enough to withstand them. Spirits may offer guidance or, in my case, power by allowing a skilled mage to channel their energy. Demon summoning is taboo and forbidden for more than anything else- what a demon wants is to be on this side of the veil- either conjured over in a body of their own or by possessing a mage. But- being mages in and of itself calls to demons. They are attracted to those with power and to strong emotion. Fear. Grief. Sorrow. Rage. There is a theory that I was researching before all of this, one that had some truth to it- that Demons were corrupted Spirits. Those we fought when you fell through the fade- despair, rage, sloth- they are embodiment of sins. Of the faults and failings of man. Spirits are...more abstract. The biggest difference between the two is that demons, aside from their intent- are far more human than Spirits."

His concession to the correction is easy - it had been a turn of phrase, and given the sensitivity of the subject, a poorly chosen one.

"Of course," he murmurs, at the explanation of which of the two are closer to humanity. Of course it's demons, if there's an option to be taken. Humanity is scarcely better. The Free City of Chyrellos is a badly delivered joke and it is difficult to regret what he did there when he carries so much lingering bitterness from his earliest days in the knighthood. The things they were forced to stand by and allow Aldreas to do, the things that the church's own corruption did not protect her sons and daughters from -

Pandions have always been the black sheep of the church family. Martel was young, once, but he was never so naive about their place in the world or what it meant. How much they could truly achieve.

"I didn't see much of the fight," he says, frankly, recalling how she'd chided him for the participation it had been reasonable to assume he'd had. "I was in no fit state to observe what was going on around me, even after I'd stopped coughing up my own blood. But I've read, and I've heard accounts...it's similar, but a very different sort of thing to the risks you take summoning a demon in Eosia. They're unlikely to possess you. But you'll lose control. Creatures who served the Elder Gods are...the minds of men are not powerful enough for that. You'll go mad, people will get hurt - but not because you were overtaken. Because you made a choice to invite something into the world that you were unable to control, and your mind broke under the force of it."

This sounds like more than just having read about it, back in Eosia.

"It...breaks more than your mind, here." Her lips press together as she glances about the garden rather than Martel. "If conjured in their own form- there is fire and destruction. As articulate and capable as a demon is on the other side of the fade, being pulled across is traumatizing for them. They break and reality breaks with them, leaving them warped and raging. If they possess an unwilling mage- everything breaks. The demon, the mage, the body they inhabit. It creates an abomination."

There is more than fire and destruction- there is blood and loss and death. And the political fallout- her awareness of that leaves Adelaide still for a moment before she clears her throat and returns her gaze to Martel. It hadn't sounded like something he'd read.

Academia is never quite so visceral in it's descriptions. She'd think it to be the same across worlds. "Intent is everything in the fade. Bring a creature made of intent, good or ill, across the world where things are subjective and nuanced and real, where will alone does not alter the fabric of reality- it hurts them. Changes them. Spirits when pulled through can become demons if they are not strong enough. Most are not. This side is too real. They don't understand it. Older demons- named demons. They can be summoned and they are likely much like those of your world. Too powerful to control."

A Damork is abomination enough without any further bells and whistles; a lesson Martel ought to have grasped without the practical. He regrets, fleetingly, pursuing this particular avenue of conversation about sorcery, but ... it's done, now, so here they are.

"For us - demons are a remnant of the old world. The world as it was, before, when the Elder Gods yet had dominion over it. They were banished with their masters, locked away - their power is beyond what a human mind is capable of comprehending. Much less wielding."

The fact he can string a sentence together, much less do literally anything else, is astonishing enough. Even to Martel, occasionally, when he allows himself to think honestly about what he did and what its consequences should have been.

"But you've no Spirits- only the demons?" That is slightly worrying. Much as demons are a problem the presence of them and demons grants a little credence to the idea of balance in the natural order. What is done with that balance by the human element is wide and varied but- demons and no spirits?

What manner of world is that?

"Oh, no," with an easy laugh. "We've spirits - most young knights with any aptitude will play with them, summon them for little tasks. Playful things, usually, like the little bee spirits. Fairies of a kind. But they aren't any kin to what might claim your soul for its master, they don't come from the same place or the same cloth. They belong to the world, not its darkest reaches."

"...bee spirits." Were Compassion a being that felt offense on an existential level- that would be a thing about now. As they aren't, Adelaide feels it on their behalf. "Fairies."

Fairies aren't real, she thinks, living in a world with dragons and dwarves and elves. It's absurd.

"The lesser of them," he says, amused at her expression. Martel has never cared much for fairies, or had a great deal of time for them, but he is unfortunately obliged to accept that they exist whether he approves or not.

"Your spirits, your demons - they're a part of this world, they're connected. Demons, in my world - they're relics of a time we were playthings of the gods.The lush excesses of incomprehensible monstrosities that early humans worshipped because doing so might mean being spared. They can't be made from anything because they were created before our recorded history. Spirits in the world are natural parts of it, they don't come from anywhere else, as demons now do."

After a moment, thoughtful, "And now you know how I felt when told the intriguing small people were creatures invented by bad Thalesian writers to sell bodice-rippers to fishwives."

"...I- what?" Context. Context is important. Context is also cultural and while learning more of Martel's world is fascinating they would likely lose months to explaining the terms they use to explain other terms.

And yet she finds herself in no way despairing of the idea. It's engaging in a way few things have been since the Spire fell.

"Intriguing small- do you mean dwarves or elves?"

Edited 2015-12-22 01:37 (UTC)

"Elves," he says, laughing - a rich, deep sound that is perhaps the most handsome thing about him when it comes so genuinely and without malice. It's easier to imagine him young and courtly in fleeting moments like this, brushing aside the shadows and the weight of years.

"Elves are just stories. Dwarves, too, actually. But my loose understanding of what we call spirits is that there is, in a manner, a spirit in everything. We see a little bee. She sees herself differently. A spell might show you how. Spirits of various things might be summoned, coaxed and bargained with. It's...frowned upon to call on the dead, but not impossible or as terrible as all that. The dead don't care, any more. They're beyond us."

Reflectively, "Little of these things are ever seen by most people. Your average Elene will never know of them and the superstitions they do have are usually only that. Old stories."

If it weren't for the sheer absurdity of the discussion from their mutual points of view- Adelaide might be moved to find him terribly attractive. The warmth that comes from him, the way the harshness drops away for a few moments as his humor mellows out the rough edges. He is handsome, he can be charming- But they'd had their rough beginning and he is laughing instead of explaining which she finds tiresome, though not so much to hold against him. Were she in better spirits, she might have laughed as well.

"Little spirits like that, fairies- those are stories here. Things told to children to help them sleep at night- or to frighten them into good behavior. It depends upon the tale. Calling Spirits here is a delicate task, they are fickle, difficult to understand, and do not deign to speak to anyone- making such a call is more likely to result in a demon answering in a spirit's guise if one isn't careful. The dead are dead. There is no calling them, here. Now and then there are rumors of ghosts haunting places but- more often than not it is a demon. Most things come back to demons, unfortunately." Though it might be interesting to speak with her peers.

Ask what it was like on the other side. How much of what they knew was right, what was wrong, what was absurd.

"Coaxing a spirit such as I know them is more like bargaining with a child - do this chore and have a sweet. One needs to handle them carefully, certainly, but more for the sake of their pride than anything else; all things have risk, but the risk there is far more minor than what you contend with."

Or what he would, if he were to try it here - but Martel was never one for playing games with spirits. No; he had skipped over silly things like that and gone straight to summoning fucking Damorks. With so much distance between him and his life, now, he is almost -

But it's done, it's over. It doesn't matter what he might've done. Only what he does next.

"I've always found the theology of sorcery more interesting than some of its practical applications," he admits, after a thoughtful pause. "The philosophy of it, the...the implications of my ability to channel my own power, I wish I could discuss it with Lady Sephrenia." More than anything, he wishes that - for more reasons than the obvious. "What that means for everything we understand about what we do and how it works."

"Here it depends. From what I was told and what I experienced- spirits choose mages that they will speak to often before their magic ever manifests. I've been hearing them for as long as I can remember. Calling one and convincing it to partner with you varies from spirit to spirit, mage to mage. My mentor charmed a spirit of faith into working with him. For me it was simpler and more specific. Compassion has been speaking to me for most of my life. In the interest of knowing precisely to what extent they would aid me, we made a contract and I keep it in return for their power." Rules she must follow, guidelines for how she might live.

It limits her in combat, to be certain, but she doesn't mind it overmuch.

"It does beg the question- if your sorcery has simply shifted into something that follows the rules of magic as established in Thedas- or if you would have been able to channel without the guidance of your patron gods in your world."

"It seems to me I bend those rules a little too much as it is for it to be the whole of the explanation, but," with a hint of genuine dissatisfaction, "I suppose I will never know."

There's no one to debate it with - there's only one way to find out, and that's going home, as they've firmly established he wouldn't choose to if he could. He has spoken of his death with, by and large, equanimity; a little bleak, but not truly regretful. He has spoken of his world with an absent-minded distance, some fleeting hints of affection but as if it is a place he has been gone from a long time, a place he has accepted is the past.

No; the first and only moment it seems he might regret anything, it's to have such a question raised and be forced to accept he'll never truly know the answer. Martel's never been good at accepting 'no' at all.

"In Eosia...the Younger Gods of Styricum are a thousand, and the relationship one has with one's god is something profoundly personal. The means by which patronage and worship are defined for a person are - intimate. It isn't polite to ask a Styric who it is they worship. To be perfectly honest, I don't know how such things are determined in the ordinary way of things."

But he's not known that for longer, enough to be more at ease with it. For a long time, it didn't matter: "For the knights, we don't choose. There is a patron god of each knighthood, through whom we practise our craft - for all that they are clergymen, of a kind, to be a knight of the Church of Chyrellos is to have an intimate relationship with a the god of another people. And the church turns a blind eye to all of these armored heathens lifting their swords in her name." There's a wryness that's almost kind. Ah, the hypocrisy and nonsensical nature of church life.

"It isn't," he adds, scrupulously fair, "that they are not faithful servants of their own god." To whom he self-evidently feels less connection; perhaps that crisis of faith he mentioned. "Knighthoods are a religious order, for all that a tavern the night of a battle might give you a rather different impression. But we are no longer obliged to simply have faith. We know that our god is real. We know that the gods of Styricum are real. And while one lets us to our own devices, a remote father represented by corrupt churchmen who send us to our deaths and abandon us to the follies of mortal kings, the other is a guiding hand and familiar voice each and every day of our lives, a god who is strengthened by our love and strengthens us in turn to survive."

(He doesn't notice when he stops saying they. Or that, perhaps, he is not so reconciled to their absence as he's asserted.)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject