[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

[keenly]

"That wasn't a defense. The Chantry just isn't the whole of the problem. You get rid of them, you have to negotiate with every country separately for terms. Good news for mages in Rivain, awful news for mages in the Anderfels."

He glances at Bene, noticing his discomfort. "We could...continue this later, possibly?"

With elfroot, probably.

[sulahnan]

Athessa looks between Colin and Benedict, gauging their reactions to this whole topic, and feeling at once like she doesn't want to stop until she understands proper, and guilty for cornering not only one, but two of her friends into talking about it. With a sigh, she nods.

"Yeah, yeah of course, sorry," she says softly, and turns back to face the shelves for a third time. "I just wanna figure out how I can help. If I can help."

[altusimperius]

"It's fine," Bene says, pleasantly enough, looking back to them with his focus returning. "I should get upstairs anyway."

Offering a little wave, he steps away and proceeds about his business, which quickly takes him back out of the infirmary. It's nice that they talked about it, at least.

[keenly]

Colin waves goodbye, releasing a long breath. He goes to the fire to brew a cup of tea.

"He just...looked very uncomfortable. I wanted him to have a chance to escape. Um." He shakes his head. "And it's not a wonderful topic for me either, but I've been facing this music longer than he has. There's things I didn't want to say in front of him, especially given how much he's already had to deal with."

Chamomile flowers go in along with hot water. "It's not just about external things--freedom or captivity, seeing our families, being protected from abuses. Despair might be the most dangerous thing a mage ever has to face. Sometimes literally--that was the demon I battled during my Harrowing."

Stirring the flowers into the water. He doesn't care if he swallows a few.

[sulahnan]

"What's a Harrowing?"

[keenly]

...Oh.

Shit.

He'd figured by now the word was out about Harrowings, especially with Athessa so intimate with Derrica. With it being such a secret in the Circle, it's the one thing mages can destroy just by being loud about it, no negotiations necessary. Still. Athessa won't like this.

"It's the, um, thing I mentioned before. How an apprentice becomes a mage. You get sent into the Fade to be tempted by a demon and prove you can be trusted not to get possessed. Depending on the demon, sometimes you have to battle it. You're, you're surrounded by Templars who are ready to kill you if you become an abomination, or just if you've taken too long. And if you don't want to take the Harrowing, you have the option of being made Tranquil instead. Or. Sometimes it's an option, other times it's picked for you. If they...think you're weak."

He warms his hands with the mug of tea, then suddenly comes back to himself and casts about for another mug. He's not even sure if Athessa wants tea, but it gives him something to do.

[sulahnan]

Tranquility, at least, Athessa does know about, and the idea that so many of her friends must've had to go through this, knowing the stakes, knowing they might be lobotomized or killed...

Colin had to battle Despair. What did Kostos have to face in the Fade? Or Derrica?

"I hope the world never goes back to the way things were," she says quietly. The anger she feels is useless now; what's she going to do? There's nothing she can rush out and physically fight to make any of this better. How long has she been holding this jar of crystal grace? She puts it on the shelf.

[keenly]

Colin swallows, passing Athessa the mug of tea he'd made for himself before starting another one.

"It's...never been easy to have hope like that. Maybe because it hurt so much when things stayed bad, so I told myself to always expect more of the same. But even that, that way of thinking, I've never done anything good in that state of mind. The closest I ever came to being possessed was at my Harrowing. My teachers always told me demons would deceive me, tempt me with something, lie, trick, flatter, whatever it took. They never told you some demons can do the same job by telling you the truth, or at least what sounds like it."

He brings the cup close to his face, taking a moment to feel the steam and smell the flowers. A long exhale.

"It said to me the things I'd said to myself. No one cared about me, no one was ever going to protect me again, I'd be completely alone as I'd been for the last several years. Only, this time, I'd be in a private room instead of surrounded by dozens of apprentices. The lack of privacy had helped protect me from, from him. He'd had to be creative to get me places where he could do what he wanted. In a private room, he could just...sneak in and close the door. Then it said yes, I would die if I was possessed. But the same would happen if I hanged myself like I'd thought of so much. The difference here would be, I could take down as many of them with me as possible."

He sips his tea.

"Then I killed it. And now I've told you about it, which is something they forbade me from doing. And you'll tell other people about it, non-mages, people whose brothers, sisters, and children could be mages. And like in this city under Meredith, non-mages will be angry at how mages are being treated. Cat's out of the bag, Harrowings no longer a secret, it's less likely they'll ever be able to go back to them. That's why you asking these questions is important. It can't just be mages who cry out--the Chantry takes that as a sign they've done something good. But if everyone does?"

[sulahnan]

The tea he places in front of Athessa goes untouched, acknowledged only by a glance as she listens.

Because what else can she do but listen? The more she talks, whether it be with Isaac or Matthias or Derrica or Marcus or Kostos, she sees that her fervor isn't well received. It isn't for her to talk on things she knows nothing about.

So all she can do is listen, and ask questions, and try to bite back the anger she feels towards the world. When Colin poses that final question, if everyone cries out, asks questions, Athessa exhales and walks over to wind her arms around him, careful of his tea and pressing her cheek to his chest. (She'd rather hear his heartbeat than her own.)

"Then I'll keep asking questions, and get other people to ask them, too. If I can't make anything better, the least I can do is that."

[keenly]

The embrace reveals that Colin is shaking, but he clings back.

"You do make things better," he says quietly but sincerely.

[sulahnan]

"Will you tell me if I make things worse?"

It might not be as simple as it sounds, she realizes, to ask to be held accountable. But how else is she supposed to help, not hinder?

[keenly]

"Yes." Not an easy thing to promise, given how much he shies away from conflict, but better that than making her drag him back from the brink again. "But you'll always make things better more than you make them worse."

[sulahnan]

She tightens her hold on him slightly, perhaps to ward off his shaking, or just because she needs to hold onto him to be sure he's not going anywhere.

"I'm serious."

[keenly]

"So am I." The shaking is starting to abate, slowly. His cheek rests on the top of her head, heedless of her hair getting caught in his beard.

"I went to the Circle when I was eleven. My family died in the Blight when I was twelve. I always thought, the only people who will never disappear if they can help it are family; otherwise, there's always someone they'll prioritize over you. You've given me family. We are family and always will be. And that goes both ways."

[sulahnan]

Athessa sighs, and nods. It doesn't assuage her fears about the harm she might do in some dimwitted attempt to help other mages, but if nothing else, she and Colin have each other's backs.

"I love you a lot, ya know," she says. "And I'll never give up on you."

[keenly]

"I love you a lot, too," he says, rubbing her back. "You've given me hope. You understand how very much that means, now."

[sulahnan]

She understands the importance of hope, which casts a harsh light on her own hopelessness and the disgust it brought on only days prior. (Is she a liar for keeping that from him?) How can she be a bringer of hope when she has none for herself? (She's put too much on him already.)

Instead of nodding again, she turns to bury her face in his shirt and nuzzles into him roughly. With accompanying sound effects, too. Scrub away whatever face she's wearing to replace it with a fresh one, and growl out unspoken emotions to cleanse the palate. But also, now her face will smell like his shirt, which smells of fresh and dried herbs, hearth smoke, and the peculiar scent of magic. That, she thinks, is what home smells like.

"Okay, okay," she declares, half muffled as she pulls away. "Back to work. Yeah? We can get mushy later."

[keenly]

It's time to extract curly hair from his beard, and he lovingly puts it back in place, smoothing it down over her head. A thought occurs to him, and his hands travel down the sides of her face to cup her cheeks.

"Yes. And. I've promised I'm not going anywhere. I still mean it. All right?"

[sulahnan]

She smiles, the expression highlighting just how close she'd come to losing her left eye in Churneau. Leander had pointed it out long after she'd considered that possibility, but now especially, with the line drawn in red and bordered in fading purples, it's impossible to miss. Not inches, but mere millimetres higher and it would've been so much worse.

Which isn't what Athessa thinks about it, because she doesn't really care right now.

"Alright."