[OPEN] Interview With A Mage

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa and you!
WHAT: Talking to Magefriends about Magic and Abominations
WHEN: August; Post-Abomination, Pre-Modplot
WHERE: Around the Gallows
NOTES: none yet

i. colin

It's one of the days that sees Athessa helping out in the apothecary, which means busy hands but a mind free to wander. She's separating the buds from dried, woody stems to place each into jars for their individual uses when she speaks:

"I've been thinking a lot about what happened..."

ii. kostos

This isn't a conversation that is going to happen organically. After reading through some esoteric writings on magic in the library, she gives up for a time and stalks off to find Kostos.

"Oi," she calls to him, jogging to catch up with him. "Got a minute?"

iii. isaac

[ Some late night crystal call when Athessa's eyes get tired of reading ]

Isaac, can I pick your brain a bit?

iv. derrica

[ They've had their fair share of difficult conversations of late, and this one bodes no different. The kicker, of course, is that it's far more personal to Derrica than it is to Athessa, so when the latter seeks out the former, she comes bearing gifts. Little spiced cookies and coffee over ice - does Derrica drink coffee? ]

It's not spice cake, but the flavor is pretty close.

v. wildcard/bring out your mage

[ either hmu on disco or plurk and i'll make a starter for you or wildcard me, whichever! ]

Comments

ii, obvs

[exequy]

Have they made up?? Possibly. But it doesn't matter much. Whether they have or not, he keeps walking, at most slowing his pace a little to accommodate her walking alongside him.

He has a wisp with him. Maybe that's convenient.

"One," he says. One minute. (Really he has several, as long as she's willing to walk up the stairs of the central tower with him.)

[sulahnan]

"Not literally a minute, fuck-ass," Even if they haven't made up, she's calling him a fuck-ass.

"I wanna know about spirit magic. Possession. That kind of shit."

[exequy]

"Have you checked," with dry and thin patience, "the library?"

[sulahnan]

She sighs. "Yes. And I can read maps, too, but asking a local for directions tends to be more helpful."

[exequy]

"I am not giving you directions to possession."

[sulahnan]

"Then give me directions to saving someone from it," He can be difficult all he wants, she's nothing if not persistent. "'Cos training is all well and fine as a preventative measure, but not every mage gets that training, right? So until — wow, okay, I'm walking here —" She has to dodge around another person who moves for Kostos but not for her. Rude.

"—So until the Chantry isn't in charge of the Circles anymore, and until mages can be the ones to dictate their own training...There's gotta be a way to...do something, right?"

[exequy]

"There is."

He doesn't slow down.

"But it takes time. Mages. Lyrium. While you are trying, the abomination is difficult to contain. People are probably dying. The mages in the Fade are at risk. And if you succeed, you are still left with someone who was stupid enough to become possessed in the first place."

[sulahnan]

Well, that's better than flat out dismissal, anyway. She speeds up to make up the distance lost by dodging around that rude NPC, and continues.

"Okay, so that's a number of problems with the current way of doing things. How do we fix 'em?"

[exequy]

"By killing the abomination."

[sulahnan]

"There really isn't a better solution than that?" If there really isn't, it just points to more reasons not to believe in the Maker. Here's a gift, but careful you don't explode or else your friends might have to kill you!

[exequy]

That makes him stop, midway up a flight of stairs, and turn to look at her.

"What?" he says. "You think we have known better all along, and the Harrowings, and the Tranquility, and the deaths—that was because we didn't feel like making more of an effort? We have spent eight hundred years under guard in towers because it seemed like a good time?"

[sulahnan]

Well she can't even be defensive, she knows she's ignorant in this area.

"No, of course not, I just—" She chews on her lip, thinking. "The Chantry controls almost all of the information, right? It's how they make sure people see the Circles as necessary. So—"

Her shoulders rise and fall in a helpless shrug. "—I dunno. I don't. But there's gotta be a way to make things better."

[exequy]

His shoulders straighten at her comments about the Chantry. He was—is? no, was—a Loyalist—

But the rest holds him back from snapping, if only just.

“Athessa,” he says. Not with that fake patience from before. He appreciates the impulse, even if it’s coupled with the somewhat insulting implication that all they needed all this time was a plucky elf who wanted to fix things. “There are things in the world that could be better than they are.”

Even that cautious optimism is is a lot for him.

“But sometimes things are just permanently fucked.”

[sulahnan]

If someone pointed out the insult to her, she'd be mortified, and that'd be its own problem. Her misplaced guilt would do nobody any favors.

"I can't believe that," she says quietly, searching his face for anything, anything that might give her insight, might stop the feeling of cold dread plummeting to the pit of her stomach. "I can't believe that. If things can't get better then what the fuck are we fighting for? What's the point?"

[exequy]

“There are things that could be better,” Kostos repeats. He starts walking again, but it’s slower this time, turned sideways for a moment as if to invite her along. “But if you stop Corypheus, free the slaves, elevate the elves, abolish the Circles for good—“

He counts them off on his fingers.

“Do all of that, there will still be people who drown in floods and starve in famines. And there will still be mages who are dangerous and have to die.”

[sulahnan]

Athessa does follow, and for once his change in pace is what prompts her to do so. If he'd marched away from her, she may not have moved from that spot. And she doesn't even try to interrupt him; she just listens.

It's only after he's stopped that she says "Is that enough? I mean, perfect is never gonna exist, but good enough has to, right?"

Maybe he was wrong to assume she wouldn't have any reason to participate in his war after the end of this one. Then again, maybe he's right and she has no place in it.

[exequy]

"I don't know."

One of his least favorite things to say, after I'm sorry and you're right.

"But there are thousands of better uses of our time and energy than trying to save a mage who was weak or stupid or power-hungry enough to let a demon in."

[sulahnan]

"Power-hungry, maybe, but I don't think weakness or stupidity should be a death sentence."

[exequy]

"No?"

His steps get a little stompier, but he isn't trying to leave her behind.

"If man blacks out in a jealous rage and kills his wife—he did not set out to do it, he was not thinking clearly, he regrets it now—is that a man you want to save?"

[sulahnan]

"That's not the same thing," she protests, but she can already tell she won't be able to defend that angle.

[exequy]

“No,” Kostos says, but obviously he isn’t planning to actually agree. How out of character. “It is worse. An abomination does not stop with his wife.”

[sulahnan]

"A man might not stop with just one wife, either," she says. Men are abominable enough without the influence of demons.

[exequy]

“Mmh.”

An agreement.

“And if we can catch him, we kill him.”

[sulahnan]

She takes a breath to deliver a retort she doesn't have, then breathes it out on a sigh and says nothing.

There's no immediately pressing reason for her to keep walking alongside the brick wall she's arguing with, but she does.