They’d both gone a little more rigid at the distant movement, like hunting hounds who caught a scent. You don’t want darkspawn clawing at the windows of the lodge, having realised that someone’s taken up residence in the building again.

“Never know ‘til you try,” Astrid points out. “You all — rifters, I mean — can do so many things I’d never dreamt of. What sorts of things can you do now? Do you have any magic that you’ve, like, tested here?”

Her mental image of a mage is so specific — Andrastians in robes, Avvar augurs in furs, all with staffs — that until now she hadn’t stopped to consider that maybe the big not-Qunari could do things, too. Cleansing. Reshaping.